Review: Cabaret
SPARKLING AND CUTTING CABARET
Cabaret has finally arrived at the Helsinki City Theatre! Floodlights sweep the large, deserted stage. Story
The characters are sharply outlined in Kaarina Hieta’s stripped-down set design. Everything of secondary importance has been eliminated, Kari Heiskanen’s direction and Markku Nenonen’s choreography make room for performers.
The musical, completed in 1966, still has a clear plot and precise portraits. The new implementation does not overshadow the story, but relies on the audience’s insight. The perspective on Berlin in the early 1930s is not offered through the doomsday of National Socialism, nor through the decadence that hums with emptiness. What is important are the individuals who, after the war and recession, look to the future with hope. Berlin is the promise of a new era.
The performance depends on the professional skills and charisma of the actors. The uniqueness of the performances can be convinced by comparing the double casting of the roles. The absolute center of Cabaret is the English girl Sally Bowles. Merja Larivaara’s brilliant interpretation of Sally is a sincerely enthusiastic and childishly impatient character whose immediacy is captivating. It’s easy to identify with Sally’s rambling in life’s dead end.
Jonna Järnefelt brings darker tones to the performance. Järnefelt’s Sally is a broken person who is looking for her own destruction. The difference between the interpretations is clearly evident in the musical’s title track Cabaret, which Larivaara serves to the audience as an extra number at the end of the show. Performed by Järnefelt, the song sealed Sally’s tragic fate.
The alter ego of Christopher Isherwood, the author of the original Berlin stories, the American writer Cliff, has been left on the sidelines in the performance. However, Santeri Kinnunen and Nicke Lignell accurately describe the inhibition that Berlin and Sally cause in a man.
Sally’s parallel character, the landlady Schneider, is in the safe hands of Kristiina Elstelä and Sinikka Sokka. Sally’s problem is Cliff’s sexuality, and the landlady has trouble with the groom’s nationality. As a performer, Ismo Kallio is once again phenomenally light in the role of a Jewish fruit seller. Kai Hyttinen makes the character more rigid, which emphasizes the inner humour.
Elstelä and Kallio masterfully master the epic style, a way of expression created by Bertolt Brecht based on cabaret art, which could have been used more in the performance.
The role of the master of ceremonies is played by choreographer Markku Nenonen, whose body also resonates with expressive spoken vocals, and Martti Suosalo, who, as usual, takes over the entire stage with his unrestrained appearance.
The tempo of the performance is remarkably calm, which emphasizes the touching nature of the story. Dramatic opposing forces are not reveled in, but they are flashed out as sharp thorns. The bareness with which sarcastic Jewish self-irony and heroic heroic lyricism collide at the engagement of a landlady and a fruit vendor is particularly confusing.
Although theatre director Asko Sarkola’s policy speeches and repertoire policy have aroused widespread astonishment, it must be admitted that the Helsinki City Theatre is currently unbeatable in the production of musicals.