Cabaret

The story of Cabaret

Set in Berlin in the early 1930s, the show centers on the Kit Kat Klub, a decadent nightclub presided over by an unsettling Emcee, and follows an American writer's entanglement with a British cabaret performer as the political climate around them darkens. Their personal story of romance and disillusionment unfolds in parallel with the growing shadow of the Nazi party, giving the musical a chilling sense of history closing in on its characters.

The nightclub setting allows the show to comment on the wider world through musical numbers staged as club acts, using performance and spectacle to mask, and eventually reveal, the horror taking root just outside the club's doors.

The music and the makers

John Kander wrote the music, working with a book adapted from earlier stage and literary sources rather than an original story. The score is built around the concept of songs performed within the club itself, giving it a sly, theatrical edge, jazzy and seductive on the surface while carrying darker meaning underneath.

As a drama, the show uses that music not just for entertainment but as commentary, letting the Emcee's numbers in particular blur the line between diversion and warning as the story's political stakes rise.

Cabaret on Broadway

Cabaret first opened on Broadway in 1966 and has since become one of the most frequently revived musicals in American theatre, with major productions reinterpreting its tone and staging for new generations. Its blend of dazzling showmanship and unflinching political subject matter has kept it feeling relevant across decades.

Audiences continue to be drawn to Cabaret for the way it fuses entertainment with warning, offering a night of style and spectacle that never lets you forget the darker forces gathering just beyond the stage lights.

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