Eddie Redmayne, Cabaret & The Art of Hating

Willkommen [Music] okay so what you're watching right now is a video of Tony Award winner Alan performing his iconic role as the MC in Cabaret has quite a bit of history with this role this character came to life in a Sam Mendes directed production in the 9s in London before transferring over to Broadway or I mean the character has always been in the show but this particular version of the character we'll get there it was later restaged for Broadway in4 14 with coming reprising the role and the Sam Mendes Allen coming pairing has long been considered a very pivotal and Visionary moment for the history of the show Cabaret Cabaret is much older than this production though with the first iteration of the show appearing in the' 60s Cabaret is inherently a project that lends itself to being revived and reinterpreted if you are completely unfamiliar the musical is about a CD nightclub in 1930s Berlin called the kitat club spoilers I guess but during this time period the Nazis take power and so as you're following the Rel relationships and the journeys of these characters you're slowly seeing aspects of the Nazi government creeping into the plot we'll get into more specifics but the whole General Motif here is that the patrons of the Kit Kat Club are able to engage in their hedonistic desires while turning a blind eye to the evils of the world for example there is a moment in the show where Sally BS a performer at the Kit Kat Club proclaims that what's happening around them is all just politics and that all of it has nothing to do with who they are and the life that they're living it's a fun party until it isn't and the party has marched back onto Broadway in the year 2024 with a new Revival of Cabaret premiering at the August Wilson theater here in New York City now this revival was originally brought over from the West End where it did get pretty favorable reviews and since it premiered here the reviews have been pretty mixed which uh you know is nothing new for a Broadway Revival however last weekend a number from the show was performed at the Tony A Polarizing Performance Awards and people are having very mixed reactions to Eddie Redman's performance as the MC so let's talk about it [Music] obviously you know I can't play the full Tony Awards clip because of copyright reasons it is up on YouTube if you want to go look up the full performance but here is a summation of the discourse surrounding this performance there are people who are weirded out by it who don't know what Cabaret is and there are people who do know what Cabaret is and they dislike the performance for the artistic choices that Eddie and the team are making here and for reasons that I'll get into those are all being lumped into the same group of people even though it's very clearly two distinct camps of people with two different kinds of opinions let's get the easier one out of the way first surely there are people who don't follow Broadway as closely as the rest of us nerds who see this performance out of context on social media and they go that's weird and off-putting why does he sound like that I don't like that isn't Cabaret supposed to be the fun sexy show and they're probably thinking of Mulan Rouge or Chicago and while I don't see many people online with that opinion I think that vocal minority inspired people who are really passionate about the show to explain why they think red M's performance is good you know why they think the artistic choices here work because there are fundamental differences between Eddie's portrayal of the MC and Alan Cummings portrayal and you can see them here I'll highlight them specifically in a second but then you have this other group that does understand Cabaret that's getting frustrated because they get what red m is trying to do here they just don't like it but they're getting drowned out by people on social media insisting that it's because they don't understand the subject matter so let's talk about the difference in portrayals here and why this performance is so polarizing from what I understand Eddie Redman's performance is actually similar to some of the older Productions of Cabaret pre Sam Mendes pre Allen cuming wherein that the MC is meant to represent the social structure and cultural changes of Berlin as the plot progresses Eddie really decides to play that up here in his performance by acting sort of like a marionette as if he's being puppeted and controlled an example that people keep pointing to is the fact that he positions his arms to appear as a swastika which foreshadows events later in the show a lot of people don't like this because it's not very subtle a big draw of Cabaret at in act one you as an audience member are supposed to be lured in by the glitz and Glamour and Intrigue of the club only to be surprised later on when things get more Sinister and people think that Eddie's performance here in this moment is giving away the cards so to speak contrast this with Alan cumming's performance who is a little bit more sexual in nature his character is very promiscuous and fluid and he starts the opening number being very alluring and carismatic in that production of the show the MC isn't a representation of a changing Berlin but a representation of marginalized groups of people being victimized over the time period of The Naz rise to power this is solidified in the Final Act of that production where the MC takes off his coat to reveal a death camp uniform on that uniform are patches representing Jews with the yellow badge a red star marking Communists and socialists and a pink triangle which represents queer people The Twist here being that over the course of the show the MC is forced to perform for an increasing audience of Nazis until they ultimately decide to execute him this is a commonly known ending of Sam Mendes's production of Cabaret and was used in the 2014 Revival and you might argue that people are unfairly judging Eddie Redman's performance of the opening number without having seen a lot of what the 2024 Revival's ending and progression has to offer and that is where I come in So I Saw The Show okay I think I've said this in another video before but I walk by the August Wilson theater every day on my way to work and I have been wanting to see this production of Cabaret for quite some time the issue and this goes into a separate criticism of this Cabaret production is that it's really expensive the reason why I got to go this week is because I offhandedly decided to check ticket prices and I saw that mezzanine seats that are normally $300 for a Thursday night show were $140 each and I was like okay that means somebody is probably off and I was right Gail Ranken who plays s BS in this production was off for the night but I thought it would be a good opportunity to see Eddie so Brian and I decided to take the plunge and head on over to the Kit Kat Club is this where they sell the Kit Kats I'm going to kill you no so our show was at 7:30 but the pre-show starts at 6:30 and we got there at around 7:00 the whole draw of this 2024 Revival is that it's supposed to be an immersive experience and so in the time before the show starts that you're in the Kit Kat Club you're supposed to explore interact with the pre-show performer there's a bunch of bars and all different floors that you can order from and I should also mention that that red tunnel leading into the entrance to the theater is pretty much all that they let you film because once they scan your ticket they give you a sticker to put on the back camera of your phone to prevent you from taking pictures and videos of the inside of the club I will say that is a rule that you can avoid but I did not out of respect for the performers and the venue the pre-show was a pretty cool element you got to walk around and sort of see different performers in their element it was a little disorienting because it is you know loud and there are a lot of people at least there were at our show so it can get very overwhelming also they gave us a shot at the front door it tasted like robot husa I did not like it very much but that's okay as far as the immersive seating they transformed the August Wilson theater to sort of have the small circular stage in the middle I'm actually very surprised at you know the transformation job that they did with it because I've been in that theater before and they had to do a whole lot of heavy lifting it seems to make this whole thing work which I'm sure is part of the reason for the very pricey tickets to this thing I also will say that my experience is pretty different from the folks who got tickets actually on the ground by the stage because there were more opportunities for performance interaction we were up on the mezanine so we were kind of suspended above the action although I will say it wasn't a bad seat at all we were technically in the back of the stage but the performers did kind of perform to both sides of the venue equally so it wasn't that big of a deal this is also another show with the turntable Broadway is in the pocket of big turntable and nobody's talking about it anyway now that I've seen the whole show front to back I thought it was pretty good this was my first time seeing a Stage production of Cabaret so my mind was pretty open in that regard but yeah I enjoyed Eddie Red Man's performance it did not feel out of place to me at all obviously I didn't see Gail ranking as Sy Bulls but I do want to give a shout out to the understudy for Sally Paige Smallwood she was amazing she was so so good I'm glad I got to see her but yeah all of the performances in here were really solid I think the biggest difference here is the ending especially versus the Allen Coming Sam Mendes version basically they do a lot of the fascism creeping in metaphor with clothing so like in the beginning of the Show everybody's wearing what you saw in that Tony's performance you know it's very lwd half naked very colorful and then as the show progresses you'll notice that more and more people in the cast start Dawning these Brown Blazer type looks and the MC transforms from this sort of out ofpl weirdo into like this very uptight nazes image the hair goes from red to blonde and he's much more uptight in how he's presented the show ends with all of the characters Dawning these suits and this very similar stoic kind of appearance and from what I understand this is basically meant to represent both the loss of queerness and individuality and self-expression under the guise of a f fascist regime I think narratively I like the Sam Mendes Allen cominging production ending a little bit better but I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with how this one is presented I've also seen the complaint that the main character Cliff get sidelined a bit you know he's the main character and all the focus is being put on Eddie redm as the MC but I also feel like that's kind of the case with the Allen cominging production as well I still think that Cliff had enough to do even though he's not as much at the Forefront as Sally BS in the MCR but yeah I saw it and I thought it was pretty good if you like the musical cabet I think you'll like this but now I want to get into some of the more valid points that people are actually criticizing and I don't think it's as much about the show itself rather more like the circumstances and time that this show is being produced in and how that compares to previous iterations Valid Criticism like I said the message of Cabaret truly does persist no matter what decade it's performed in it kind of transcends time because domestically internationally the rise of fascism and turning a blind eye to atrocities seems to be a looming narrative and has been for quite some time so some people have pointed out the irony about the fact that a musical with such an important message like Cabaret is being gay kept by these insanely High ticket prices and the people getting the best experience are the ones who pay for the upclose and personal immersive aspects close to the stage and for a show that focuses so much on the immersion there really is no moment where the mirror gets turned on the audience so for example I've read about Productions of Cabaret where it's the same kind of thing the audience is meant to be in the kitat Club but a literal mirror is reflected back at them to show how they could potentially be complicit it's a small detail it's one that might not matter to you but I will say there is a point where you know after the First Act and you find out that a lot of these people on stage are slowly buying into Nazi ideology like the reveal has already come to fruition and then at the beginning of the next ACT there are cast members pulling people from the audience up on stage to dance and it's you know definitely the people who paid the most money to be there who get that experience and I'm not hating on them I don't know their personal circumstances for all I know they blackmailed Eddie red man for the tickets I have no idea but I understand how this can be interpreted as look at these rich people partying with the Nazis which seems like grounds for poignant commentary in a modern-day 2024 but the show doesn't go anywhere new with that so a common critique that I've been seeing is that if you're Reviving Cabaret you should really have something new to say and this production is kind of like what's in the text and I personally don't think it's bad like I watched it and I was like this is a pretty solid production of Cabaret but I understand why actual fans of the musical are wanting more and that brings me to my last point we should let people The Art of Being A Hater like and dislike stuff this is going to seem like it's coming from out of left field but let me cook for a sec today I saw a tweet that was commenting on a cover that Sabrina Carpenter did of good luck babe by chapel rone and it says something to the effect of oh my God she's the new Kelly Clarkson every cover that she does of other people's songs is better than the original and like that's not a take that I personally agree with and it's probably not even a take that they agree with it's probably bait but then there were a billion people who quote tweeted that and they were like oh my God Serena Carpenter should never cover a song ever again why are people acting like this is good she took all the emotion out of the song Just because this one person made like a hyper exaggerated bait tweet you know what I'm saying and that's how I feel about Cabaret at the end of the day just because people are tweeting that they don't like Eddie Redman's portrayal of the MC that doesn't necessarily mean that they don't understand it or that they don't understand any of what Cabaret is about and similarly I don't think people who enjoy this version of the musical are easily impressionable dummies who don't know good art things can be good and things can be bad you don't have to prove that another person's opinion is morally wrong just because we disagree with it you can just disagree and support the art that you like instead objectively I know one thing to be true there was a cabaret and there was a Master of Ceremonies and there was a city called Berlin in a country called Germany and well you know the rest feel the C oh CH come to the Cal come taste the wine come get the B Come Blow a horn start crating right this way your table's waiting