In “Cabaret,” Eddie Redmayne plays the ultimate master of ceremonies: a puckish purveyor of loose morals and tight stockings in Jazz Age Berlin.
But when he’s not onstage at the August Wilson Theatre, which has been stunningly transformed into the decadent Kit Kat Club, the Oscar-winning actor says he has adopted “quite a monastic living.” He and his co-star, Gayle Rankin, are texting around the clock on WhatsApp, feverishly trading intel on vitamin drips, throat-coat teas and Chinese medicines. Backstage, you’ll often find them sharing bottles of Gatorade and bags of Lay’s potato chips (“The oil is very good for your throat!” Redmayne assures us).
“There’s a morbid fascination that we’re enticing all these people to our club to get boozy and be hedonistic, and we’re going to be stone-cold sober,” he jokes on a Monday morning Zoom call. “I had a Negroni last night to celebrate the last show of the week and instantly felt guilty.”
“Guilty and drunk!” Rankin adds with a laugh. “I had an Aperol Spritz and I was like: ‘Woo! This is crazy!’”
Their discipline is all part of keeping up with the rigorous demands of “Cabaret,” a bold and bewitching revival of the classic John Kander and Fred Ebb musical, which opens on Broadway April 21. The story is set in pre-Nazi Germany, where an American writer named Cliff (Ato Blankson-Wood) becomes besotted with a devil-may-care showgirl named Sally Bowles (Rankin), who performs at a seedy nightclub overseen by an eccentric Emcee (Redmayne).
Reimagined by director Rebecca Frecknall and performed in the round, the hypnotic new production gives Broadway audiences an experience unlike any other. Theatergoers can arrive an hour early to the club, where they’re whisked through a neon-lit back alley and greeted with free shots of peach schnapps. Inside is a sort of debaucherous Disneyland: allowing guests to roam upstairs to various themed bars, where scantily clad dancers beckon you through beaded curtains and glitter-painted musicians straddle their instruments. Emblems of eyes follow you everywhere, from the club’s ornate wallpaper to a giant, golden disco ball at the entrance.
The idea is to make the audience “discombobulated,” Redmayne says. “You’re being performed to by an extraordinary prologue cast. All of this is to will you to leave your troubles behind, so by the time (the actual show starts), we can seduce and compel you into a space where the story is the thing.”
Throughout the show, Redmayne leers at the crowd from the edge of the stage and slinks around tables of dining guests. During the sultry opening number, “Willkommen,” Rankin’s Sally shakes hands and stumbles over audience members as she wanders through the mezzanine.
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