Come (back) to the 'Cabaret': How the Broadway revival shapeshifts with its stars

Eddie Redmayne, Adam Lambert, and Orville Peck have each reimagined the musical's lead role of the Emcee in Rebecca Frecknall's Tony Award-winning production.

The shrewdly crafted story of Cabaret, which explores the rise of Nazism within the confines of a once-liberating nightclub in 1930 Berlin, is practically perfect on paper. But that doesn't mean the musical need never change from the way it was first performed. Rather, it means the text continually allows for fresh interpretations, and there have been countless since Cabaret's 1966 premiere.

Take director Rebecca Frecknall's semi-immersive revival, currently playing at Broadway's August Wilson Theatre and in London, where the production had its seven-time Olivier Award-winning premiere. On both sides of the pond, this Cabaret's venues were wholly remodeled into the underground Kit Kat Club. Audiences sit on all sides of a circular stage and the performers move among them, a setup that folds viewers into the club's revelry and, crucially, implicates them in its corruption, too.

This Cabaret is a visual feast (credit to Tony-winning set and costume designer Tom Scutt), and it rewards repeat visits. I've attended three times as different lead actors have joined the Broadway cast, and each experience of the show felt new. In fact, more than any feat of staging, it's these actors, particularly in the role of the Emcee, who truly show Cabaret's potential for exploration and re-interpretation.

That's been true since the beginning. The Emcee, our otherworldly host who morphs in step with Germany's sociopolitical landscape, was billed as a supporting character in the original Broadway production directed by Harold Prince. (Cliff Bradshaw, the American writer who chronicles the devolution of the Kit Kat Club, and Sally Bowles, a willfully ignorant performer whom Cliff befriends, were traditionally the main characters and remain so.) But Joel Grey's landmark performance — which earned him a Tony and, later, an Oscar — propelled the Emcee to lead status in every revival since. The bawdiness of Alan Cumming's Emcee, first seen under Sam Mendes's direction in 1993, has also become a blueprint for future revivals, Frecknall's included.

Her production's Emcee is also clownish and increasingly nightmarish (Scutt's costuming aids in both regards). But all three Broadway actors put their own spin on the character. Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne, who won an Olivier for his performance in London, played the Emcee as omniscient and unknowable, a kind of impish god who seemed to revel in foreknowledge of the Kit Kat Club's descent into Nazism — and our ignorance, until he decides to clue us in.

His replacement, American Idol star Adam Lambert, couldn't have been more different. Delivering a definitive performance that should join the Grey/Cumming pantheon, Lambert betrayed a deep well of fear and empathy beneath his showmanship. The Emcee is always meant to represent the "spirit of the age," but while Redmayne's represented it as a force within his power, Lambert's represented it on behalf of those who feel swallowed up by it. Unsure how to keep his head above water amid the tide of fascism, he kept it down until the final moment, when he he stood tall as though he mustered up the confidence that he could, if nothing else, blend in enough to make it through. (Complicit as the Emcee may be, however, Lambert notably went off script to call out theatregoers who laughed at a particular moment of bigotry in the show.)

Yet another foil to both Redmayne and Lambert comes in gay country music star Orville Peck, who currently plays the Emcee through July 20. Deeper-voiced and broader-bodied than any of his Broadway predecessors, he instantly commands attention — and authority. His opening declaration, "Leave your troubles outside," isn't an invitation as usual; it's an order. He tells us "the orchestra is beautiful" while making a sharp "applaud now" motion that shows he won't accept dissent.

For Peck's Emcee, becoming an authoritarian is a natural next step. We seem to know that before he does. Flippant and giggly with his every movement, including a certain salute he tries on for size, he seems to take the Nazis' rise as a joke of which he knows he'll never be the punchline. Before he knows it, he's the embodiment of its reality. A late scene in which the Emcee appears as a German customs officer usually suggests that Cliff is seeing things, but here, his appearance in uniform feels real.

Off stage, Peck also stands apart from his predecessors in that he always makes public appearances with a mask. Whether he'd shed it for Cabaret was the subject of much speculation — if a mask could believably be incorporated into any character, it's the Emcee, after all. But Peck bares his face to audiences each night, a choice that clearly separates the actor from the character. I left wondering if it helps Peck do the same.

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Photo credit: Eddie Redmayne, Orville Peck, and Adam Lambert in Cabaret on Broadway. (Photos by Julieta Cervantes)