Long anticipated 'Cabaret' is too ambitious to fail

Apr. 30—Performers will be climbing on the bannisters, and leaning from the catwalk and the balustrades.

Done up in leather straps, fishnet stockings, wigs and thick layers of makeup, they'll walk through the aisles and emerge from all around. Above and behind them at center stage, a band led by local musician Sean Ambrose will carry the showtunes.

"Cabaret" is set in Nazi Germany, and follows the story of Cliff, an American writer who, while trying to craft a novel, is beginning to more than question his sexuality. Within the seedy Kit Kat Club, where the majority of the musical is set, there's singing, animated dance routines and a general air of sexuality emanating from each boisterous performance.

So yes, there's a lot to take in when it comes to this much-anticipated musical put on by the Cheyenne Little Theatre Players.

"This is a huge show. It's actually one of the biggest shows I've ever done," director Justin Batson said. "It's been really good, and I attribute a lot of that to the crew that I have assembled with me. Everyone's been just really awesome about pitching in and doing their role."

Batson has his work cut out for him, but, for the most part, the labor-intensive process of shaping "Cabaret" into its nearly final form has been manageable due to the team around him. He's never directed a musical, but he did perform in the show the last time the Little Theatre held the production in 1997.

And this reboot has been a long time coming.

Batson pitched this stage play in 2019, but after one rehearsal, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down all theater activity. In 2021, they tried to revamp the show, but Batson knew that a performance of reduced proportions wouldn't do the grandeur of "Cabaret" any justice.

Besides grabbing costumes and impressive performances from actors, a major reason for "Cabaret's" flare is the highly animated choreography, for which the Little Theatre enlisted Tenacity Bricher-Wade, owner of En Avant Dance Studio.

She's been choreographing for Little Theatre musicals for some time now, but Cabaret is a different beast. It's a dance heavy show, with fast moving scenes and musical numbers that require precise blocking.

To prepare for this performance, Bricher-Wade paid special attention to taking lessons slow, ensuring that actors were keeping up with their choreography. Actors playing the role of dancers at the Kit Kat Club had particularly strenuous months ahead of them.

"The dancers started rehearsing the very first thing, and they've been going nonstop ever since," Bricher-Wade said. "I think they've maybe had, with the exception of weekends, a couple nights off from dancing. Otherwise, they've been there five nights a week, two to three hours a night, just going over it and over it and over it."

Most of the performers were hesitant at first, and rightly so, but through repetition, she's watched as they've become confident in their characters.

Bricher-Wade is right there with them. She isn't just choreographing the musical, she's performing in it. As one of the Kit Kat dancers, she's forced to think less like a choreographer and more like an actor.

They're two very different positions to be in. Off the stage, she's analyzing the entire group performance at once. When she's among the actors, Bricher-Wade has to stop thinking about everyone around her and start focusing on her own steps.

"It has been a little bit of a challenge," she said. "The dancers come to me with questions about how to fix things. It's funny, because we'll be working on something when I'm being a performer, and I'll look at them, and I'll ask them a question about the choreography."

Not all of the performers are the most practiced dancers, but that wasn't necessarily what the crew was looking for during auditions. Sure, they had to have a certain degree of ability, but an untrained actor who recites their routine with enthusiasm is favorable to the opposite.

Now that the cast is halfway through dress rehearsal, they are in the final stages of honing their performance. They're less than a week away from opening night.

Krista Dixon, who co-leads as Kit Kat dancer Sally Bowles, has extensive experience in theatre, but she's never been in something quite like "Cabaret." Suddenly, she kicking and singing at the same time.

"It was a little intimidating at first, for sure," Dixon said. "You always have that point in your head where you're like, 'Am I actually going to get all of this memorized?'"

But she's had a good system in place to make sure she gets all of her lines down. She's a resident of Wellington, Colorado, who works in Greeley and has had to drive to Cheyenne for rehearsal multiple times a week since March.

That's at least two hours a day spent commuting.

"I have that drive time to learn," Dixon said. "I have all of my lines recorded, and then I just play them back. If it's a scene with somebody else, I do their lines in a different voice than my lines in my own voice.

"That tends to be how I learned all my dialogue."

Coming to terms with her character was a whole different process, given that they're polar opposites. In her words, Sally is self-absorbed, only interested in avoiding her problems by drinking, doping and having sex.

"She's a big fish in a little pond, and she wants to keep it that way," Dixon said.

Her avoidance of the issues surrounding her tie in with the time period the musical is set. As the Nazi Party strengthens its grip on Germany, Sally wears the armor of willful ignorance.

All of the characters' reactions, or lack thereof, to the world around them are the key to the musical's commentary.

"On the surface, it's about Sally Bowles and the cabaret," Batson said about the musical's plot. "Really, I would say the underlying theme is about how people react to a country in change. You really get the gamut.

"You get people who accept it, you have people who try to ignore it. You really get the whole range of human emotion."

The setting of Nazi Germany was one of the more difficult points for the production's development. Batson remembers when he performed in "Cabaret," and how around the same time as the show, Mt. Sinai Synagogue was defaced with swastikas.

But the impact of fascist dictatorship is essential to the plot of "Cabaret," and it isn't something that can simply be avoided. In the first week of production, Batson invited Jason Bloomberg, a member of Mt. Sinai, to speak with the cast and crew about the Jewish perspective of Nazi rule.

"We want to be respectful to history, but we also want to make sure that we're presenting things in a way that people are not going to feel that we're condoning it," Batson said.

Will Carpenter is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle's Arts and Entertainment/Features Reporter. He can be reached by email at wcarpenter@wyomingnews.com or by phone at 307-633-3135. Follow him on Twitter @will_carp_.