Summer Stock Austin: Cabaret: A chilling and heart-shattering production of a Broadway classic

When making a list of the best musicals of all time, one name that keeps popping up has to be Masteroff, Kander and Ebb's Cabaret, and for good reason. The play ran for decades on Broadway, nearly becoming the longest running show of all time, winning numerous Tonys and receiving numerous revivals and updates over the years. The folks over at Summer Stock has chosen to bring this show to Austin, putting the task in front of a talented group of young high school and college students, and the result is nothing short of astonishing. Theater fans should be sure to throw away any preconceptions they might have regarding this one, as this version of the play has very little to do with Fosse’s version of the musical, or the Oscar winning film. Summer Stock Austin’s production, led by director David Valdes and musical director Michael McKelvey, have decided to take it in a wholly different direction, finding inspiration from Sam Mendes’s 1998 revival, which amped up the sexuality and hardened the edges, creating a much darker, much deeper experience.

The show opens with an explosion of sexiness, as we’re introduced to the luscious denizens of Berlin’s Kit Kat Club, and Austin theater fans will surely notice a few familiar faces, including Alexa Dogget of Chaotic Theatre's Alice and Chrissy Shackleford, famous for playing Mabel in the controversial comedy The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, but the show really begins when Kelli Schultz takes to the stage as Sally Bowles. With legs for days and a captivating smile, she steals every man’s heart with a mischievous smirk, but it’s once she opens her mouth and belts out one of her songs that you’ll truly be hooked. Schultz cuts a fine figure, but also brings the acting chops to match, combining great comedic timing with a real emotional core, making number such as “Maybe This Time” truly effective. Her crowning moment comes with her performance of the showstopper, “Cabaret, a number has for so long been relegated to torch song territory, but Schultz infuses it with a raw desperation, her jaw clenched and face twisting in anger as tears roll down her face, striking the audience with the power of freight train.

Director Valdes does a magnificent job balancing the elements of sex and tawdriness with the play’s inherent undercurrent of doom, and he’s helped greatly by Aaron Moten’s performance as The Emcee. Sashaying out to stage in little more than a pair of a suspenders, the character boasts raw sex appeal, but from his first moments there is a madness inside Moten’s eyes that is undeniably disturbing. His menacing grin in the thing of nightmares, effectively sending a shiver down the spine of anyone in the audience, and when his high-pitched falsettos soar down into a bellowing growls, it’s enough to make your hair stand on end. Even in his more exuberant numbers, such as “Two Ladies”, in which he dances with a woman and a man in drag, and “If You Could See Her”, where his partner is a gorilla, there is still something unsettling just below the surface, something between the lines that just seems off. Moten successfully transforms himself into an incubus, sure to haunt your dreams for days to come.

The play features plenty of bold, in-your-face performances, but sometimes it’s the smallest gem that shines the brightest. Though Sarah Becker and Stephen Mercantel as Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz spend less time on stage than most of the other main characters, and lack any huge song-and-dance numbers (their most famous song involves a pineapple), their heartbreaking romantic entanglement makes up the emotional core of the production. Though both actors perform admirably, it’s Mercantel who pulls into the spotlight by play’s end, delivering a soul-crushing portrayal far beyond his years. Mercantel has shown major talent over the past year, delivering stellar performances in Capital T’s Sick and Hyde Park Theater’s Body Awareness, but here he brings his show to a whole new level. The role starts out as strictly light and comedic, but takes on much more emotional depth as the play progresses, and Mercantel takes on this change with subdued skill. In a simple twisting of the face he captures all the disgust and alienation of a Jew in the early days of the Nazi uprising, his heart shattering to pieces right before our eyes as the woman he loves is forced to make a difficult decision.

Summer Stock Austin's Cabaret is an intriguing and deceptive production. It leads you in with promises of the flesh, parading before you gorgeous men and women in skimpy costumes, preying on your desires, all the while drawing you into a violent tempest of emotion, dropping you into a chilling underworld of greed, lust, and violence, pulling your heartstrings until they break. It’s a harrowing and exhausting ride, but one well worth taking, featuring moments of pure beauty and comedy, mixed with a heavy dose of heart-shattering pain and nightmarish intellectual horror.