Director's Notes

B.T. McNicholl, director of the energetic and politically-charged Tony Award-winning musical Cabaret (January 10-29), discusses the role of music in the production, in which all of the show's actors play instruments

While many musicals today feature actors playing instruments, director Sam Mendes' production of Cabaret was the first to do so, and the one to make the best use of the idea. In this famous production (which will be presented in all its decadent glory at the Maltz Jupiter Theater in January), the actors-as-orchestra conceit is not a gimmick: it is central to the overall concept.

From the very beginning of rehearsals for the original creation at London's Donmar Theater in 1993, Mendes wanted the music in the production to have "an improvised quality," as if it were an organic part of the evening's events. Actors picking up instruments and creating the very music of the evening seemed entirely appropriate, since the entire show takes place in a cabaret.

Setting the show in a cabaret, Mendes reasoned, would accomplish two goals simultaneously.

First, it would serve as a metaphor for the show's setting and time: Germany in the Weimar period (1919-1933), when rampant inflation, poverty and a fecund artistic scene defined the country as a wild party teetering on the edge of an abyss. Then, as now, Berlin was the nerve center, and reputed to be the most sexually liberated metropolis in all of Europe. Thus, seated at tables with little red lamps, the audience was allowed to enter into the carefree, anything-goes, promiscuous, and excessive world that sowed the seeds of Nazism, which would succeed the Weimar Republic with Hitler's rise to power in 1933. The audience is caught up in the mad whirl of the period, thus becoming complicit in the story's harrowing narrative.

Second, setting the show in a cabaret liberated the material. Mendes felt Cabaret was, in many ways, a dramatic piece with a political message - but it was trapped in a typical Broadway musical. Shedding the trappings of its Broadway origins, the piece could be re-imagined and the show's emotionally charged love stories - fractured by politics - could take center stage.

By extension, the show needed actors (as opposed to seasoned musical theatre veterans) to make it come to life, and Mendes wanted their voices to be an extension of their singing voices. Every attempt was made to bring the characters' reality to the fore and maintain a certain intimacy. The musicians, then, became part of the fundamental concept that saw everything - from scenery to costumes to orchestra - coming from within the confines of the theatre space itself.

In terms of its impact on the actors, the additional responsibility of playing instruments creates an ensemble feeling of tremendous depth and mutual trust. Becoming an orchestra requires teamwork of the first order, and an especially attuned sense of listening to one another.

Beyond that, since most actors haven't touched their instruments since high school, they are all scared together! They tweet, bonk, honk, squeak and blast until, with coaching and a miraculous display of tenacity, they cross over the threshold to become the musical through-line of the evening. They are always busy - dancing, singing or acting onstage - and then playing their instruments on the always-visible bandstand. It makes for a thrilling never-still-for-a-moment performance every night.

Finally, at the end of the show, we hear the band playing, but they are nowhere to be seen. Their instruments sit alone in full view, lifeless, and haunting in their abandoned state. For Mendes, the disappearance of the orchestra suggests a great loss: an entire society, vanished... the cost of a world spinning off its axis that is at the heart of this profoundly moving Cabaret. "In here, Life is beautiful...."