The 1966 American musical has opened at a venue that for decades hosted one of the city’s most famous revue troupes.
For decades, the Lido was one of the glitziest cabarets in Paris, home to extravagant, acrobatic numbers and the Bluebell Girls, a renowned chorus line. Last July, the curtain came down on their feathered headpieces for the final time, and the ensemble was disbanded. Their replacement at the theater this winter? “Cabaret” — the 1966 American musical.
On a recent evening, with bejeweled Bluebell outfits still shimmering in window displays by the venue’s entrance, the Lido’s patrons seemed ready for a show. When the Emcee from “Cabaret,” directed by Robert Carsen, introduced the musical’s own ensemble, the Kit Kat Girls and Kit Kat Boys, there were eager cheers, but the lack of topless dancing, not to mention the somber Nazi-era plot, may have come as a surprise to some audience members.
Yet the Lido’s move from cabaret to “Cabaret” is no coincidence. It speaks to a larger shift in Paris, where American-style musicals have been on the rise just as historic revues have struggled to maintain relevance.
The pandemic only accelerated the decline of mainstream French cabaret, long a tourist attraction at venues like the Lido and the Moulin Rouge: Without out-of-towners, there simply weren’t enough Parisians interested in nostalgic cancan dances to prop up expensive revues. Add to that the genre’s increasingly outdated objectification of women’s near-naked bodies, and cabaret appeared to have fallen out of step with the times.
The Lido’s reinvention as a musical theater venue — under a new owner, the hotel conglomerate Accor, and a somewhat silly new name, Lido2Paris — is clearly an attempt to lure back local crowds. To mastermind the transition, Accor hired Jean-Luc Choplin, whose tenure at the Théâtre du Châtelet from 2006 to 2017 saw a string of successes with English-language musicals, including “My Fair Lady” and “42nd Street.”
This winter, the Châtelet has again been filled to the rafters, this time for a revival of Stephen Mear’s 2016 production of “42nd Street.” And other venues have been listening to the “lullaby of Broadway,” as one “42nd Street” number puts it. At the Théâtre de Paris, a French-language adaptation of Mel Brooks’s “The Producers” by the director Alexis Michalik has turned into a runaway hit since its late 2021 premiere, and is currently scheduled to run through April.
While performed in different languages — “42nd Street” is in English — “42nd Street” and “The Producers” don’t depart from Broadway habits. “42nd Street” opens with the curtain raising a couple of feet, so all we see are is the ensemble’s legs, tapping away and garnering enthusiastic applause. The storytelling in both productions is bright, with an almost uncanny rendition into French, in “The Producers,” of the upbeat pace of American-style dialogue.
“The Producers” didn’t please every critic — the French newspaper Libération blasted its “discriminatory” stereotypes — but as theaters in France struggle to return to prepandemic ticket sales and the cost of living rises, musicals have seemed immune. That includes the French rock opera “Starmania,” recently revived for the first time in decades, but France simply doesn’t have a wide repertoire of musicals to draw on: The genre was long considered minor, and too entertainment-oriented, by French theater makers.
That leaves Broadway favorites, and specifically the classics — what’s missing on Paris stages, inexplicably, is more recent musicals, like “Hamilton” and “The Book of Mormon.” Carsen’s “Cabaret” isn’t actually the first version of this musical, with its book by Joe Masteroff, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb, to be seen in Paris this century. A French translation, staged by Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall, was presented at another historical cabaret venue, the Folies Bergère, in 2006. But the Lido2Paris’s production, in English with subtitles, is a dry, ominous showstopper.
Carsen, a renowned Canadian director, takes full advantage of the venue’s layout: The Lido was designed as a cabaret-restaurant, with tables laid out on three sides of a thrust stage, and the Kit Kat Klub, the Weimar-era Berlin venue around which “Cabaret” revolves, is right at home in this atmosphere.
Before its revue closed, the Lido offered a high-end dinner service each night. (Over 150 people were laid off as part of Accor’s takeover, from restaurant staff to the permanent ensemble.) Now audience members have to trek to one of two small bars to buy a glass of champagne and nibbles, which left the auditorium feeling a little deserted.
The production captures the nihilism of 1929 Berlin and the steady rise of Nazism, which some characters see as little more than a distraction, starting with cabaret performer Sally Bowles (a role made famous by Liza Minnelli, here given restless intensity by Lizzy Connolly). Clifford Bradshaw, a bisexual American writer who has come to Berlin seeking freedom and inspiration, comes to see the growing political threat — yet fails to convince Sally, despite the love between them.
As the sardonic Emcee who presides over both the Kit Kat Klub and the show itself, Sam Buttery is an arresting sight from the opening “Willkommen” — bald with heavy, dark makeup, at once charismatic and blasé.
All the soloists acquit themselves well, but Buttery and the 15-strong Kit Kat Girls and Boys lend Carsen’s production much of its momentum. The choreography, credited to Fabian Aloise, is brilliantly dynamic, its exaggerated sexual innuendo rendered grotesque by the dancers’ distorted, over-it facial expressions. The choreographed opening of the second act, in which the dancers slowly don shorts, boots and swastika armbands, transforming into a high-kicking Nazi line, is especially chilling.
Near the end, in video projections, Carsen ties the rise of fascism in “Cabaret” to contemporary events, with images of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as well as protests in Western countries like France. It’s a somewhat vague conclusion for an otherwise biting production, given that, by this point, the audience has likely drawn their own parallels.
“Cabaret” is worth seeing both for its merits and to say goodbye to the Lido as it existed for decades. In early February, it will close for extensive renovation, with a view to reopening next December. A spokesman for the venue said that it would retain some of its hallmarks, like the tables around the stage, and upgrade its technical equipment.
The long-term plan, under Choplin, is simple: more musicals. Tourists may not take to this change of programming, since the genre is hardly associated with Paris, but French audiences seem to approve, and the applause at “Cabaret” was warm.
Blow to Parisian history or not, for now, American entertainment is winning the argument.
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
