As you enter the Kit Kat Club at the Playhouse Theatre, a sticker is placed atop your phone’s camera. This is to establish that taking any photos inside the theatre is forbidden – you are, in fact, in the Kit Kat Club, and performers dance atop the bar counter as you navigate the winding corridors to your seat. I request that you imagine those stickers upon your eyes for just a moment and allow yourself to truly listen.

Cabaret is a play focused on the years leading up to World War II in Berlin. It follows the lives and relationships of ordinary people – Clifford Bradshaw, an American writer; Sally Bowles, a Kit Kat Club performer; Herr Schultz, a Jewish fruit store owner; Fräulein Schneider, the landlady of a few small apartments – as the rise of the Nazi party alters their world irreparably. Emcee, the narrator and overseer of this tale, is himself a representation of the German socio-political scene in the 1930s. Clifford arrives in Berlin in hopes of writing a novel. He makes friends with a German smuggler, Ernst, and agrees to do work with him. At Ernst’s insistence, Clifford ends up at Fräulein Schneider’s home and at the Kit Kat Club, where he meets Sally Bowles and is enamoured with her. After Sally is fired, she and Clifford begin to live together. However, Sally’s rejection of the increasingly precarious political reality and desire to live in a bubble creates a rift between them.

I was lucky enough to attend Reeve Carney and Eva Noblezada’s first performance in London’s Cabaret on the 22^nd of September. I knew little of the show, at most the themes, but I knew what to expect from the performers. I will hardly be the first person to rhapsodise about Eva Noblezada’s talent – she is, after all, one of the greatest performers currently in the musical theatre scene. Likewise, Reeve Carney’s falsetto remains a trademark of Hadestown for a reason, matched only by his face’s expressiveness on stage. They are undoubtedly a musical theatre power couple, but I was intrigued by the concept of them in Cabaret, a much darker show that would surely utilise different parts of their voices. Suffice to say, I was not prepared for how much I would love that sound.

Sally Bowles encompasses multitudes that Noblezada jumps between effortlessly. Her ability to alter her voice whilst singing will never cease to amaze me, and in Cabaret, it is most evident during ‘Don’t Tell Mama’. However, despite the sheer perfection of that performance, it is overshadowed completely by Noblezada’s rendition of ‘Cabaret’ in the second act. Her voice remains raw and vulnerable and she allows emotion to seep into it like none other. She never falters, not when she’s running through the stage, not when her entire back is bent backwards, not even when Sally Bowles’ state deteriorates into what I must construe as a complete mental breakdown. In the darkness of the theatre that followed, the only sounds you could hear were cheering, clapping, and held breaths being released. This lasted almost two minutes before the show had to go on and the audience could no longer revel in the magnitude of what we had just witnessed. It is difficult to pick a favourite Eva Noblezada role, but I am certain this was my favourite Noblezada performance.

Carney’s presence as Emcee dominates the stage of the Kit Kat Club. His movements are a mixture of unsettlingly smooth and strangely rigid, a haunting impression during the seemingly light first act. The tension between him and the living characters is palpable enough that you feel you might run your hands through it – I recall being particularly breathless for that reason during Emcee’s sequence with Sally Bowles, the precursor to the musical’s titular song. Carney fully embodies an overwhelming, inescapable presence, whether he skulks in the shadows or stands as a centrepiece. Truthfully, of all performances of Carney that I’ve seen live and through recording, his Emcee caught me by the throat and has refused to let go since. I am uncertain as to whether he was born for this role, or if the role was born for him.

This is not to say that the show itself was without flaw – I think the pacing of the story could use some changes, and the German accents were at times decent and at others rather amusing – but as we stepped out of the theatre on the 22^nd of September, one thing remained clear: we had witnessed musical theatre history.

Rating: 5/5

If you would like to see Noblezada and Carney in Cabaret, you can purchase tickets here! Trigger warnings for the play include: antisemitism, violence, domestic violence, and sexual misconduct.

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