![]() Himself a gay man, Cumming’s performance dominated the show with painted nipples, suspender belt hoisted round his groin and oodles of suggestive histrionics – even upstaging a punkish Jane Horrocks yelling herself hoarse with the title number as Sally. It wasn’t until Cumming’s sexually exalted take on the master of ceremonies that Emcee was discovered as specifically gay – an idea more in step with the enlightened 1990s.Īlan Cumming won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his take on the master of ceremonies That idea of sexual emancipation remained the guiding light when Wayne Sleep took the role of Emcee in the 1986 West End revival – alongside Kelly Hunter as Sally and Peter Land as Cliff. But her Sally was otherwise a young woman discovering sexual freedom in the face of brutal repression. She acknowledged that she struggled with some of the singing, including the long note at the end of the title number. She was, he said, ‘innocent and knowing, vulnerable and tough’. Working on the 1968 West End premiere, John Kander described Judi Dench as ‘the best Sally Bowles I’ve seen in my life’. The only reference to Emcee’s sexuality is when he professes his love for a woman dressed as a chimp.īesides, back in the Sixties Cabaret was taken as a parable of sexual emancipation and anti-authoritarianism. Grey was married with children at the time and only later came out as gay. More significantly from our point of view today, the role of Emcee, originated by Joel Grey in the 1966 Broadway premiere and the 1972 movie, was presented not as a gay man but as a sinister, androgynous angel of death sneering at the hypocrisy of human sexuality. And the fallout from Sally’s botched abortion is swept tidily under the carpet.Ĭhristopher Isherwood’s memoir, Goodbye To Berlin, has taken on many iterations, most famously Bob Fosse’s 1972 film Cliff’s anti-Semitic landlady became a sympathetic woman romantically involved with the Jewish fruit-seller Her Schultz. Despite themselves being gay (like Isherwood), their musical presented the book’s English writer as a straight American, Cliff Bradshaw, who falls in love with Sally. Her manager quickly rejected the part on the grounds that it was too immoral for the star of The Sound Of Music.īut Kander and Ebb’s musical was if anything an expurgated version of Isherwood’s book. But whether or not Redmayne was naive in taking the role of Emcee, Cabaret has always been prey to the shifting convictions of our times.Įven before Kander and Ebb came on board to write the music and lyrics for the show loosely based on Christopher Isherwood’s memoir of Germany in the 1920s, Goodbye To Berlin, the role of Sally Bowles had been offered to Julie Andrews. And Omari Douglas plays the young American writer who falls under her spell. Alongside Redmayne, the Irish actor Jessie Buckley is playing the club’s English singer Sally Bowles (played by Liza Minnelli in the Bob Fosse film). ![]() ![]() Eddie Redmayne has courted controversy for playing Emcee in the latest of revival of the Kander and Ebb musicalĮlsewhere in this new Cabaret there is no controversy.
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