There are only a few shows I look forward to seeing over and over again. They are shows that always seem to have a little bit of something new and yet familiar. Cabaret is one of those shows. Maybe it is because I yearn for a time when Germany ruled the world, or maybe it’s just because I love oversexed, gender-bending lounge singers and hosts. Whatever the reason, Cabaret never gets old or played out.



So it was with an oooh and an ahhh that I saw that Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theater was staging the epic musical about the fall of the Weimar as the Nazi party rises to power ever so gracefully and quietly in the early years.  Maybe it’s because we are deep into the political season and that whole situation is raw to most Americans, but I thought the show was as topical and relevant now as it was when it first took to the Broadway stage.

Set in and around the infamously bawdy Kit Kat Club in Berlin as World War II was about to dawn, the show centers on the adventures of Cliff (played by Louis Hobson), who is an American author on a quest to find the inspiration for his great American novel only to end up in a boarding house turned brothel with a drug addicted whore who sings at the nearby club. Cliff serves as a narrator of sorts since the show could easily have been written without this character, but he pops up every now and then to keep the storyline going. The true headliners of the show are the heroin-whore Sally Bowles (Tari Kelly) and the wonderfully creepy master of ceremonies (Nick Garrison).



For the most part Kelly nailed the role, but I just wasn’t wowed with her the way I wanted to be. Not so for Garrison, who took the role in a more dimensional way than I have seen it in awhile. While many actors make the role an over-the-top sex emcee like he stepped out of The Rocky Horror Picture Show or something, Garrison made the character more real by parading a series of little details that suggest the oversexed club worker is just doing what he is told and just wants to survive the hard times like everyone else. This is how I see the rise of Nazism: getting started not by parades of well wishes for the party but because people just wanted a way to feed their families.

“Money, Money” and “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” provided the polar tops of the emotional swing during the show. Money sings to the light and surface while Tomorrow gets cold and dark quickly.



Still, the bottom line is those songs come off well. "Tomorrow Belongs to Me," the pastiche of Nazi uplift anthems presaging the regime that scrubbed Weimar clean, is horribly lovely, ending with a human turned swastika. Even in a sentimentalized, visually loud, spectacularly Vegas-like production, Cabaret remains kitsch with a winning sting. This show is a ride. The final scene caused chills in the spines of everyone in the audience. The curtain fell, and there wasn’t a sound in the house other than the rapid beating of hearts.



[The 5th Avenue Theatre, 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday, 1:30 and 7 p.m. Sunday, $20-$77, 1308 Fifth Ave., Seattle, 206.625.1900]