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:
Fraulein Schneider, an older German woman who runs a boarding house; goes with the flow of the world around her because she figures her time is almost up anyway.
Song Context:
Cliff negotiates his boarding house room fee down to a more affordable rate and is surprised that Fraulein Schneider lets him get away with it. She insists that she has learned to not care too much about the petty details of life, such as the difference of a few marks.
Fun Facts:
1. This musical was based on a play called I Am The Camera, by John Van Druten.
2. 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.
3. Lotte Lenya originated the role of Fraulein Schneider on Broadway, and was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance.
"You say fifty marks. I say one hundred marks, a
difference of fifty marks-
Why should that stand in our way?
As long as the room gets let,
the fifty that I will get
is fifty more that I had yesterday,
Ja?
When you're as old as I -
is anyone as old as I?
What difference does it make?
An offer comes, you take.
For the sun will rise
And the moon will set
And you learn how to settle
For what you get.
It will all go on if we're here or not,
So who cares? So what?
So who cares? So what?
When I was a girl,
My summers were spent by the sea.
So what?
And I had a maid
Doing all of the house-work, not me.
So what?
Now I scrub all the floors
And I wash down the walls
And I empty the chamber pot.
If it ended that way,
Then it ended that way,
And I shrug and I say:
So what?
For the sun will rise
And the moon will set
And learn how to settle
For what you get.
It will all go on if we're here or not
So who cares? So what?
So who cares? So what?
When I had a man,
My figure was dumpy and fat.
So what?
Through all of our years,
He was so disappointed in that.
So what?
Now I have what he missed
And my figure is trim,
But he lies in a churchyard plot.
If it wasn't to be
That he ever would see
The uncorseted me,
So what?
For the sun will rise
And the moon will set
And you learn how to settle
For what you get.
It will all go on if we're here or not,
So who cares? So what?
So who cares? So what?
So once I was rich
And now all my fortune is gone,
So what?
And love disappeared
And only the memory lives on,
And so what?
If I've lived through all that
(And I've lived through all that)
Fifty marks doesn't mean a lot.
If I like that you're here
(And I like that you're here)
Happy New Year, my dear,
So what?
For the sun will rise
And the moon will set
And you learn how to settle
For what you get.
It will all go on if we're here or not
So who cares? So what?
So who cares? So what?
It all goes on.
So who cares? Who cares?
Who cares? So what?"