Rotary play Cabaret good try at serious theatre

Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

BRACEBRIDGE — Rotary plays are traditionally light, frothy, entertaining affairs full of fun dance routines and colourful costume.

They’ve been increasingly well done in recent years — both in Bracebridge and Huntsville, where there is an eager, talented pool of players on stage and behind.

It’s that cast and crew that has added to a musical stage classics — and even in some moments saved otherwise clichéd Broadway flops.

I’ve wondered of late, why let all that talent go to waste.

Why not take a break from the “Rotary Musical” and put on some serious fare.

These people could clearly do great justice now with what they’ve developed the past decade and with new performers joining the Muskoka cast.

So, it seemed a good — if odd choice in the #MeToo climate — to mix the two.

To stretch the company and expose its true self, while giving audience more credit.

To use an Olympic analogy — to go for the gold.

With “Cabaret,” the producers, directors and their teams have dared to be bold.

And they’re on the podium.

Whether they own it or not, is up to you if you catch the final four performances at the Rene Caisse Theatre in Bracebridge.

And you should, just to satisfy your own curiosity.

On many levels, it’s gold, silver and bronze.

It just depends, again, on the moment.

“Cabaret” is a serious play about race and prejudice and power, viewed through the rose-coloured lens of a burlesque musical.

It’s popular, lively and with a message that resonates today.

The Rotary production is out of its comfort zone, a clear departure from what it is good at.

Director and set-designer Emma Phillips sets the tone of the “Kit Kat Club” — a down street Berlin night club where anything goes.

The stark stage is smartly stripped-down, bereft of any decoration or furniture that would deflect from her purpose or get in the way of the meaning.

Yet it perfectly reflects the dark mood of the piece.

The heavy lifting is left to the ADs in wardrobe, choreography, music and choral.

They can stand out, like fireworks exploding in the night.

But like good sex — and this is overtly good sext — the message can get lost in the climax.

But you have to get there.

If you can last that long.

And that takes too much time here.

The first half leaves you wanting more — more of the great band overlooking the proceedings onstage that gets relegated mere background music (not the raunchy sounds you’d hear in a nightclub/brothel). And a little more humour wouldn’t hurt. Great laughs get lost.

One pines for “Springtime for Hitler in Germany ….”

One nice touch are the scenes between veteran local actors Jim Dwyer and Pru Donaldson (the respective Jew and German). However charming and important their storyline, their solid acting outlives their singing.

And there are some fair-attempt choreography numbers by willing if not totally able dancers. Unwittingly, they fit the Kit Kat bill perfectly.

And you get it in the second half.

This “Cabaret” takes too long satisfy.

If, on the surface, it’s meant to be about love, seedy sex and the penultimate theatrical moment, there’s some of it there, but as a whole, it just doesn’t seem to hit the right spot.

It’s too subdued. It fails to capture the vitality that German beer houses and burlesques.

It lacks a single spark to ignite life, energy, spirit, vivacity, exuberance, buoyancy, bounce, élan, verve, vim, pep, brio, zest, sparkle, dynamism, passion, fire, vigour, driver or punch Rotary Musicals are famous for and skilled at.

If the first half is the foreplay.

The second half has to be the climax.

German aspirations of the Fatherland suddenly emerge in the chorus singing the Nazi anthem “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” as the curtain lights come down on the first half  with a salute to Hitler foreshadowing the subtext of a Jew can’t marry a German.

It’s a deep and though-provoking play that may be bit more than Rotary Musical audiences call for or can be delivered satisfactorily.

Good on them, though, for trying to go for the fence, when they should perhaps have started by stretching a single into a double.

Parres Allen slyly weaves the piece together as the LGBQT2 emcee; lead Emma Gibbs is subtle as the burlesque singer Sally Bowles who has a lovely voice and seduce the male lead Matt Williams, the sympathetic, easily-coerced and confused writer Cliff Bradshaw.

Next year, they should try something between this and a musical.

I think the actors, production people and audiences will agree.

“Cabaret” continues Sunday (sold-out), Thursday, Friday night and Saturday afternoon.

Tickets are $30 at night and $25 for the matinees.