'Cabaret': An Anna Waits Tribute Review Anna was unable to attend last Saturday's performance of Cabaret at the Lyric Theatre in London's glitzy West End due to illness, so I took her place on the understanding that in her absence I write a review of it for her and y'all to 'enjoy.' Quite frankly what I know about musical theatre you could write on the back of a postage stamp, and what you'ld write is 'I've seen Bugsy Malone a buncha times and really dig the Jesus Christ Superstar Soundtrack which is a lost progressive funk rock masterpiece,' apart from that I'm pretty much clueless, but what the hell, you gotta write about summfin other than Lester Bangs and The White Album sometime, huh? Here you are, then: CABARET, AN ANNA WAITS TRIBUTE REVIEW.

So the whole show was pretty much a bust. I mean, I don't know much about super-camp decedent Berlin naked Nazi musicals, but I know what I like. There was a buncha stuff I thought was lame, but winning awards for lameness was Anna Maxwell Martin, in the Minelli Sally Bowles role. She stunk the place up like a skunk. Apparently she was really good in Bleak House, which I'm told was some sorta big deal, personally I never caught it, I mean, jeez, BLEAK House? C'mon. FUN House, with Pat Sharp, that was a good show. I don't wanna watch a show about a BLEAK house, fercryingoutloud. ATOMIC House I mighta watched. Or ZOMBIE House, something like that. Anyway, I'm told she was real good in Bleak House, I never caught it, whatever, she was just awful in Cabaret. Y'know Helen Baxendale as Emily in 'Friends'? (Y'see how highbrow my reference points are? Missing Anna's review much? There's a Gwen Stefani reference coming up soon.) Well, Maxwell Martin's Bowles was exactly like that. Not sexy, funny or likeable enough. Shelia Hancock was brilliant though, she sang a song about a Pineapple which was really good, I wished there woulda been more songs about exotic fruits in the show, infact I wish that in general, songs about exotic fruits are cool, like that bit at the end of 'Holler Back Girl' by Gwen Stefani (Told ya!) when she spells out BANANA. The old chap who played Hancock's would-be husband, I didn't catch his name, but he was awesome too, I generally dig older actors (like the guy who plays Max Cherry in 'Jackie Brown,' who is der coolest), this chap carried an emotional weight the younger cast members couldn't match even if they'd have wanted too, and I really cheered up when these two were on stage, infact they lit up a stage which in every other respect was both figuratively and physically dull dull dull.

Yeah, the staging was dull. They use three stripped wire beds in different ways (f'instance as cages) for just about every scene, and there were some big sliding screens, that was pretty much it, all very STARK and MINIMALIST and, y'know, GREY, Anna Waits tells me that a recent version of Guys and Dolls was done in a similar ANTI-MUSICAL MUSICAL way, the whole 'it's not a musical, it's a a play with music' bit, I guess this approach has it's advocates, personally I don't think it's unreasonable to go see Cabaret and expect a little glitz, glitter 'n' glamour from it, seeing as I thought that was pretty much The Whole Point, and if you wanna consider this an experiment then I'd have to consider it a failed one. The problem is that as a play it ain't really up to much, which ain't a problem unless it is made to be a problem, which staging it like this it is. You are forced to judge it on a criteria it was not built to be judged on.

The last two minutes were pretty cool, some Nazis came on and knocked over big 6ft high letters spelling KABARET, the music got all echo-y and evil psychedelic (like, THE PARTY'S OVER, right? It's A BAD TRIP), then it finished and so what. The only other thing I guess worth mentioning is that five minutes into the show some naked guy ran on stage with his Johnson flapping about, which was quite an unwelcome shock to my delicate constitution. In conclusion -Nazis knocking stuff over and Pinapple songs: good / the Bleak House lady and Johnsons flapping about: bad.

Next week: Paul Fuzz continues his series of reviews of things he knows nothing about as he travels to Brussels to investigate the Belgian Films About Goats Festival.  ¶ 12:40 PM