Cabaret invites audiences into the decadent world of 1930s Berlin, where the seedy Kit Kat Klub pulses with music, revelry, and a haunting sense of denial. Aspiring American writer Cliff Bradshaw arrives in Germany and is swept into the seductive orbit of British singer Sally Bowles. As the Emcee welcomes you to the cabaret, the lives of the club’s performers and patrons unfold against the ominous rise of the Nazi regime. With unforgettable songs like “Wilkommen,” “Maybe This Time,” and “Cabaret,” this Tony Award–winning musical is both a dazzling spectacle and a chilling reminder of how political apathy can have devastating consequences.

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Book by Joe Masteroff | Based on the play by John Van Druten and stories by Christopher Isherwood | Music by John Kander | Lyrics by Fred Ebb

CABARET is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Tams-Witmark LLC​​

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​Emcee: age 20’s-40’s. Male- A strange, omniscient and gender-bending Master of Ceremonies. He acts as a kind of narrator of/commentator on the show’s action. Engaging, endearing, and decidedly German, the Emcee represents both sides of Berlin’s counterculture in the 20s; the “seedy”, dirty, sexually explicit side, and the entrancingly avant-garde, beautifully spectacular, and utterly liberal side. Bisexual and gender ambiguous, as loose in his movements as he is in his scruples and dripping with a German brand of “joie de vivre,” the Emcee is a foil for Hitler’s totalitarian regime looming in the near distance.

Clifford Bradshaw: 20’s-30’s. Male. A struggling American writer looking for inspiration for his next novel, Cliff arrives to consume the free-living adventures of 1920’s Europe. Depressed from writer’s block and eager to live more excitement, Cliff meets Sally and the Kit Kat Club who arouse and energize him to love and dream, but the impending realities of Nazi Germany intrude and the people he loves betray and breakdown his fantasy world… in the end, heartbroken, he finally begins to write.

Sally Bowles: age 20s - 30s. Female. A vivacious, talented British cabaret performer, and an utterly lost soul. Escaping the discomforting parts of her reality and perhaps craving stability, she wants to fall in love – and life – with Clifford. But she is unable to trade her sexy, illicit cabaret lifestyle for the unknowns of a potential family life with Clifford. Sally is a sweet charmer with the vocal and spiritual toughness of a woman who has come of age before her time. Her choices with Clifford move her singing performances in the show from a bubbly siren to painfully sophisticated.

Frauline Schneider: 40’s-60’s. Female. The amiable landlady of the Berlin boarding house where Clifford and Sally rent a room. She often tries to negotiate situations to serve her interests better but ends up resigning to the reality that usually she can do little better than just “taking what she can get.” Though she falls in love and becomes engaged to Herr Schultz, she then ends it, deciding it is inadvisable to marry a Jew in the face of rising Nazi threats. But she will continue enduring: “All my life I have managed for myself… There was an inflation, billions of marks for one loaf of bread, but I survived! And if the Nazis come, I will survive. And if the Communists come, I will still be here, renting these rooms! For, in the end, what other choice have I? This is my world!”

Frauline Kost: 20’s-50’s. Female. She has been a boarder in Frauline Schneider’s house for many years, and during that time has been constantly engaged in battle with Schneider about her lucrative evening activities with the sailors she brings to her room, whom she introduces to other boarders as her distant relatives. Sexually forward and confident, Kost is also a Nazi sympathizer who begins a rendition of the anthem “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” at the engagement party of Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz.

Ernest Ludwig: 20’s-40’s. Male. Cliff's first German friend, a friendly and charming successful business (or appears to be). After using Cliff as a part of a scheme to divert the German Customs officers attention away from his illegal imports, he turns out to be an up-and-coming member of the Nazi Party. Ernst’s journey in the show reflects the journey that Berlin itself takes in Cliff eyes: from welcoming, kind, and exciting, to dark, hateful, and dangerous.

Herr Schultz: 40’s – 60’s. Male. He runs the “finest fruit market on the Nollendorfplatz” and is a boarder in Frauline Schneider’s house. A kind and generous Jewish bachelor, he becomes Schneider’s fiancée, and the victim of an Anti-Semitic hate crime. Ever-sunny disposition and a bit of willful naivete, Schultz does not (want to?) believe his world will turn on him.

Kit Kat Club Girls – Rosie, Lulu, Frenchi, Texas, Fritzie, Helga

Kit Kat Club Boys – Bobby, Victor, Hans, Herman

Sexy, quirky, and outrageous, the singers and dancers in the Kit Kat Club. They will double other roles and perform in scenes outside of Club scenes, active through the show.