Epsom Players – Cabaret

Reviewed by Tony Flook  (28th October 2004)

Director Shaun Hughes and his team captured the spirit of this brilliant musical with a memorable presentation at Epsom Playhouse last week.

The quality of the production was apparent from the start as Geoff Hall, the enigmatic Emcee, walked with almost arrogant deliberation down the scaffold-supported stairs into the smoke-filled Kit Kat Klub, for Willkommen.

The bored-looking dancers with their torn fishnet stockings said everything about the venue, a microcosm of Germany, heading blindly towards destruction as Nazism slowly but inexorably took its grip 10 years before the Second World War.

Emcee went on to feature equally impressively in Two Ladies and Sitting Pretty.  The actor commanded attention whether introducing his nightclub acts or as a sinister silent observer of events.

The dancers showed versatility throughout – bright and energetic in one scene, languid, with painted smiles in another.  They did full justice to Sarah Openshaw’s often demanding choreography, whatever the mood.

Damien de Roche brought the role of Clifford Bradshaw to life and sang the deceptively difficult Why Should I Wake Up with ease.

Sally Jones could have shown more of Sally Bowles’ curious mixture of frivolity, underlain with vulnerability.  Her singing voice was ideal for Perfectly Marvellous but needed a harder edge for her two key nightclub numbers.

Linda McMahon and Robert Hamilton were ideally paired as Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz – old friends who, belatedly, express their true feelings, only to torn apart due to Berlin’s growing anti-Semitic atmosphere.  They showed understanding of their characters as well as of their relationshop with each other.  Their songs, such as Fraulein Schneider’s solo So What or their duet Married, all carried conviction.

Laura Falconer portrayed Fraulein Kost as a resilient hooker, ready, willing and able to make her living, whatever regime was in power.

The prophetic Tomorrow Belongs To Me was sung with chilling clarity by the chorus, which included several students of Epsom-based Laine Theatre Arts

An intelligent, simple, yet always effective, set design, together with an alert stage team, helped keep the action moving with barely a pause. Kevin Ward’s lighting design captured the flavour of every scene without ever being overstated.

Colin Warnock and his orchestra interpreted every number, whether raucous or reflective, in exactly the right mood.