Musicalfest 2007: Cabaret and Company

I was having a conversation recently with some friends of mine who insisted that they did not like musicals at all. Now, to me this seems like a simplistic opinion. The world of musicals is so varied that it seems impossible to blanket-statement dislike musicals. The difference between what you get with Rodgers and Hammerstein and, say, Kander and Ebb or Sondheim stylistically and thematically is pretty vast, considering that both fall under the "musical" heading. Jukebox musicals are coming from a completely different place than musicals that start out being developed for the stage, film or TV. There's so much that goes into what a musical is - story, song, dance - that define each show stylistically on what seems to me to be a pretty vast spectrum. The two musicals that this post is about seem to me to be emblematic of the kinds of musicals that don't necessarily come to mind when people condemn them wholesale.

I initially became introduced to the music from Cabaret and Company through the online radio website AccuRadio. I've started to reach a point where my music collection is driving me a little stir-crazy just by existing with the selection of music that it currently contains, so I occasionally have to frantically find some other music resource to tap into. A few days with the 60s and 70s Broadway station convinced me that Cabaret and Company (along with A Chorus Line, the movie of which I hope to watch and write about at some later date) were different from other musicals in a completely fascinating way. I mean, talking about A Chorus Line, a song like "Dance Ten, Looks Three" is worlds apart from "My Favorite Things." Cabaret carries the dark, seductive tones of the work of Kander and Ebb, while the super-adult nature of Company is unexpectedly absorbing.

Due to my new love, Netflix, I was able to watch the movies that grew out of the stage show. For Company, that film is the Pennebaker documentary of the recording of the original cast album. It's really too bad that the film didn't grow into the intended series, because it seems like a fascinating process, the confluence of vocals and instruments necessary to capture forever a song usually performed on stage in an extended series of one-shot deals. The tongue-twister nature of "Getting Married Today" and emotionally draining performance in "Being Alive" are highlighted by the multiple attempts to capture words and emotions and preserve them for posterity.

Cabaret is a totally different animal. Apparently dramatically different from the stage show, the movie, as directed by noted choreographer Bob Fosse, is nonetheless both astounding and chilling. It seems easy to forget, in the American Idol-era of unjustified, over-the-top praising of talent, what it truly means to be a triple threat. One of the things that I love about movie musicals is when they feature someone who really can do it all. Liza (with a Z!) Minnelli is one of those people. Her presence almost becomes shocking as she goes from song to song. Lingering beneath the talent displayed by Minnelli and Joel Grey as the MC is the constant knowledge that the audience has of the potential fate for all of the characters we see. Not to take every comparison back to Rodgers and Hammerstein and The Sound of Music, but I think that it's worth noting that there is even a dramatic difference in tone and style between two musicals that both concern the rise of Nazism in Europe. Even when it's clear that the characters are deceiving themselves into ignoring the way that the world around them (in early 1930s Berlin) is changing, the film never lets the audience forget that they know how the bigger story really ends. The only other film that I can recall seeing in recent years that left me feeling similarly shaken was Capote, where a similar feeling of foreboding about an inevitably bleak future for the people concerned in the film swept over me as the credits rolled.

I keep thinking about writing posts instead of actually writing them, and then they just float around in my mind driving me crazy, so I want to write down other entries that I have in mind so I don't forget them:

-West Side Story, Hairspray and Cats: When dance defines a musical
-Guys and Dolls and My Fair Lady: The non-singing actor as musical star
-High School Musical and High School Musical 2: The modern musical phenomenon

Edited to add: Since watching Cabaret, I've become kind of totally obsessed with this song from the film:



I mean, "Everybody loves a winner, so nobody loved me"? Killer.