Show Synopsis:
Clifford Bradshaw has come to Berlin to work on his latest novel during the 1930s, while the Nazi party grows stronger, and becomes friends with Ernst Ludwig. He begins to fall in love with Sally Bowles, an entertainer at the Kit Kat Club, who becomes pregnant, and does a paid errand for Ernst, unaware that it is for the benefit of the Nazi party. Sally leaves Cliff after they argue about the baby and gets an abortion, while Cliff gets into a fight with Ernst over different opinions of the Jewish Herr Schultz. Cliff is angry at Sally but asks her to go with him to Paris. When she declines, he leaves Nazi Germany by himself and begins to write the story of what happened to him in Germany.
Character:
Sally Bowles, a singer and dancer at the Kit Kat Club in her 20s; an optimist who wants to just keep on living her life, despite the changes occurring to and around her.
Song Context:
Sally has just returned to the Kit Kat Club, since she left Cliff and has to earn money. Despite her heartbreak and the turmoil her body is starting to experience with her pregnancy, she tries to smile and carry on the show as if nothing is wrong. She wants life to be more like a cabaret than what it has shown itself to be.
Fun Facts:
1. This musical is based on a play called I Am The Camera, by John Van Druten.
2. The character of Sally changed from a blonde to a brunette between out-of-town tryouts and opening on Broadway.
3. Over the years, professional productions of Cabaret have played the story with much more sexuality and violence as it was performed further and further from World War II and in front of different audiences with different evolving tastes.
"What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret.
Put down the knitting,
The book and the broom.
Time for a holiday.
Life is Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret.
Come taste the wine,
Come hear the band.
Come blow your horn,
Start celebrating;
Right this way,
Your table's waiting.
No use permitting
Some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away.
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret!
I used to have a girlfriend
known as Elsie
With whom I shared
Four sordid rooms in Chelsea.
She wasn't what you'd call
A blushing flower.
As a matter of fact,
She rented by the hour.
The day she died the neighbors
came to snicker:
""Well, thats what comes
from to much pills and liquor.""
But when I saw her laid out like a Queen
She was the happiest...corpse...
I'd ever seen.
I think of Elsie to this very day.
I'd remember how'd she turn to me and say:
""What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret.""
And as for me,
I made up my mind back in Chelsea,
When I go, I'm going like Elsie.
Start by admitting
From cradle to tomb
Isn't that long a stay.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Only a Cabaret, old chum,
And I love a Cabaret!"