For Martin's birthday, his parents treated us all to a live performance of the musical Cabaret at the National Theatre of Germany in Weimar. What a treat! It was an easy train ride from Erfurt to Weimar, and on this cool Autumn Friday night, the air seemed to sparkle with energy. As we walked the short distance from the train station to the theatre, we detected an actual pulse in the air - live music was streaming through loud speakers, and beer and food trucks lined the square in front of the theatre. It was the weekend of the Onion Festival! Who would've thought that onions would bring tens of thousands of people to Weimar for a weekend?
The only way into the theatre was through the crowd. It was quite fun to watch the evening-wear-attired, mature theatre goers weaving and dodging through the very young and very intoxicated Onion Festival goers.
Earlier in the week, I had mentioned the play to our landlady, the artist Diana. Diana and I have tea once a week. She practices her English, I practice my German. I asked her if she had seen the play. She wasn't familiar with the musical "Cabaret", but she was very familiar with the German Kabarett - a term of art in this part of Germany reserved for political satire. No big deal for someone like me born in a country founded on basic freedoms like freedom of speech. But in Germany, under the German Empire, all forms of public criticism were forbidden. This changed after the first World War when the ban was lifted, and cabarets sprouted up across Germany- the traditional French form of entertainment featuring comedy, song, and dance, as well as the political satire of the Kabarett artists, the Kabarettisten. There was something here that I wasn't quite grasping. I was going to see the musical Cabaret, in Weimar, at the National Theatre. I felt a certain responsibility to better understand the context. And so I dug.
At the end of World War I, the German authorities met with the Allies in France, and entered into the Treaty of Versailles which ended the war. Thereafter, a new parliamentary government was established for Germany. This new government was called the Weimar Republic because Weimar is where the first national assembly met in early 1919. The Weimar Republic was Germany's government from 1919 to 1933, the period after World War I until the rise of Nazi Germany. What does this have to do with Cabaret? I asked myself this very question. And I found a lot of really interesting information on the World Wide Web with lots of theories of the how and why of it all [spoiler alert: it all eventually leads to the rise of Nazi Germany]. But I am trying to stay out of politics and focus on what was occurring culturally. With that caveat, I offer this quote that I found helpful, to explain culturally what was going on and how/why the "cabaret" came into play:
"The Great War had ended and in its wake Germany faced famine, a 2-million-soldier death toll, rampant inflation, and social chaos. For a new breed of thrill-seekers eager to escape the memory of war, hedonism would become the antidote.
The fourteen years of the Weimar Republic, from 1919 to 1933, oscillated between depravity and glory. Hyperinflation coupled with postwar trauma opened a Pandora’s box of vice.
Entertainment in the Weimar Republic was the locus of a dream state, a site of licentious escapism and of radical cultural experimentalism.
Reviled by some and embraced by others, music, cabarets, revues, and same-sex nightclubs encapsulated Germany’s ambivalent attitude toward modernity as a whole. The Weimar Republic’s brief culture of spectacle and wild freedom paradoxically awakened the very forces of censorship and repression that would soon became the nation’s nightmare."
Schirn Kunsthalle, Hirmer Verlag, 2017
Heavy stuff, yes? Since I had never seen the play, Ron thought it would be a good idea to watch the 1972 movie version starring Liza Minnelli, Michael York and Joel Grey, which we did the night before the play. I share this detail, because the play we watched in Weimar, almost 50 years later, was every bit as powerful and timely, if not more so, than the film.
The performers were outstanding. It was the German version of our Broadway. Not only were the actors incredibly talented and professional, but the stage, the lighting, the sound system, everything was state of the art. We sat in the third row, and witnessed every emotion up close and personally. The dialogue was entirely in German, as were most of the songs, but we felt the performance. For me, it was the best play ever.
After three "call backs" and one last encore rendition of "Life is a Cabaret" (in English, of course) we were back out in the square. The pavement was wet - did it rain? LOL - it was beer! Yes, life is a cabaret:
Start by admitting
From cradle to tomb
It isn't that long a stay.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Only a Cabaret
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