I have no idea what made me agree to see the musical Cabaret – it could have been the discount tickets combined with not really knowing much about the story. I was expecting the worst, and I guess it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it to be. Very disappointed with the last real west end musical I saw, I left the show probably best described as slightly ambivalent.

We had excellent seats and it’d been the closest I’d been to a stage yet at only three rows away from the front. Whether or not it’s good or bad, we could see everyone’s face in so much detail that we could, to much of our amusement, see the spit fly into the audience as they annunciated their words as much as possible. Fortunately they limited their sharing with the audience to the front row.

I guess the performers to Cabaret must be comfortable with each other with several scenes best described as, how do I put it, rather raunchy in either the things they did or the things they wore (and sometimes what they didn’t wear). The story is set between the 1930s and 1940s and centres around an American guy and English woman in the heart of Berlin. One of the other actors, best known from Home and Away plays a very poor German, his accent slipping into a blend that sounded almost Russian at times and the other probably most well known celebrity, Julian Clary who plays the narrator, surprisingly good at his role.

Whilst I wouldn’t recommend this musical for everyone, I guess some people would find the story entertaining, or at least recognise some of the songs that made this musical famous.

Thekua.com Rating: 5 out of 10