In time for election week, Musical Theater Heritage brings ‘Cabaret’ to Crown Center

Last year, when Musical Theater Heritage decided to put “Cabaret” on the schedule for this November, everyone was thinking about the storyline, the music, the production. They were not thinking about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

It may be a coincidence, but executive producer Chad Gerlt sees the political parallel clearly now.

“We chose ‘Cabaret’ more than a year ago, but it is interesting to see how things are aligning in today’s political climate with the election,” he says.

The musical is set in 1931 Berlin, where the denizens of a decadent nightclub try to ignore the reality of the looming Nazi Party.

Gerlt insisted the theater doesn’t want to make political statements. But still: “It speaks a little bit to the world today,” says Gerlt. “Even though it deals with Nazi Germany, there’s subject matter in there that can be directly relatable to today’s headlines.”

“Cabaret,” an eight-time Tony winner, was the earliest hit of the longest-running songwriting partnership in Broadway history, John Kander, a Kansas City native, and Fred Ebb, who went on to create “Chicago” and “Fosse.” Their first collaboration was the 1965 Broadway musical “Flora the Red Menace,” starring a young Liza Minnelli. The next year, “Cabaret” debuted. The 1972 Bob Fosse film version of “Cabaret,” starring Minnelli, won eight Academy Awards.

In the Musical Theater Heritage production, John Cleary plays American writer Cliff Bradshaw, who comes to Berlin in search of literary inspiration but instead finds singer Sally Bowles (played by Stefanie Wienecke) after stumbling upon the Kit Kat Klub. Thomas Delgado plays the Emcee who entertains the club’s underground clientele.

The theater takes a different approach than the Broadway or Hollywood versions of “Cabaret,” says George Harter, the theater’s executive director.

“If you’re only familiar with ‘Cabaret’ from the film version, they made it seem more festive, more like a party,” he says. “The stage version is much darker than that.”

His theater is known for minimal costuming and no sets, a style stemming largely from Harter’s work as the host of “A Night on the Town Radio Series.”

“Taking a musical and doing it live on the radio, we did not need costumes and sets,” says Harter. “We kept the radio format in having the musical stripped down and done in a radio style. People responded to that.”

Harter created Musical Theater Heritage in 1998 and joined forces with Gerlt in 2003. The theater has performed in Crown Center since 2008.

“We want to leave a legacy behind,” says Gerlt. “We want this company to be here 50 years from now continuing to celebrate the history of these American musicals the way they are today.”

This story was originally published November 2, 2016 at 8:00 AM with the headline "In time for election week, Musical Theater Heritage brings ‘Cabaret’ to Crown Center."