In Cabaret, Bebe Neuwirth Is Ready to Tell Some Hard Truths
(Photo by Sergio Villarini for Broadway.com)
Bebe Neuwirth has some advice to theatergoers who are planning an evening of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club.
“You are going to have a new experience,” she told Tamsen Fadal in a conversation at the Civilian Hotel on The Broadway Show. “Forget everything that you just walked away from. Also, forget any ideas and preconceptions you have about Cabaret.”
(Photo: Marc Brenner)
Neuwirth has a long and close association with the work of Kander and Ebb. In 1996, she received her second Tony Award for playing Velma Kelly in the Broadway revival of Chicago. Ten years later, she returned to play Roxie Hart, before returning to play Mama Morton in 2014. She has also frequently performed their songs in concert. (“Their music gets into every part of one’s being,” she has said.)
So it means something that she loves director Rebecca Frecknall’s bold vision for Cabaret as much as anyone.“They completely deconstructed Cabaret,” she said, “and then they reconstructed it. And in doing that, the story is intact, the music is intact, the relationships are intact, everything is intact—but it's coming to it without thinking about anything from before.”
Neuwirth stars alongside Adam Lambert’s Emcee and Auliʻi Cravalho’s Sally Bowles in the complicated role of Fraulein Schneider, an older gentile woman who becomes engaged to Herr Schultz, a Jewish tenant (played by Steven Skybell), during the rise of fascism in 1930s Berlin.
It’s not exactly a spoiler to say that the musical Cabaret begins with sexy dancers and ends with Nazis. But the appearance of a telltale swastika in the show reliably elicits gasps from the audience every night. The show has lost none of its power to shock.
“It's an honor and a privilege really to be able to play this part in this show at this time,” said Neuwirth. “I'm not really an activist—so how can I be an artist and contribute in some way that helps people to find their own truths for themselves? If I can be in this show at this time and present some truths to them, that is a privilege that I'm grateful, deeply grateful for.”
Check out the full segment below.
