e too overbearing for speech. The songs encouraged the musical to move forward and not stand still whilst the ‘star’ sang their showstopper! Stephen Sondheim advocated the “conceptual musical”. He subordinated every aspect of the work to his personal vision. As a result increasing intellectualised musicals confronted audiences that had frequented the theatre as a means of escape. The audience was no longer told‘...The best things in life are free, that everything is coming up roses, and that if you don’t have a dream how you gonna have a dream come true?’ Set in the Kit Kat club where the cabaret encourages you to leave your troubles behind and believe that life is beautiful. Cabaret confronts the era of Nazism in Germany, even including a Nazi song, ‘Tomorrow belongs to me’. In 1966, the premiere date, the Holocaust was still very fresh in everyone's mind. The story follows the life of Sally Bowles, an English girl, working in the Kit Kat club. The emergence of the Nazi party’s power is charted alongside the story of Sally. The musical was no longer singing about how wonderful life is but actually challenging a complex, poignant political era. It was an ‘intelligent’ musical that was not solely about entertaining but also about thinking. By setting it in such a provocative era a huge step towards political musicals was being taken. Never before had Broadway tackled such a sensitive subject.Cabaret also used the theatrical form of ‘a show within a show’. While we are watching actors on the stage, we are also watching them act on a primary stage. This theatrical device can almost be seen as a form of alienation. We realise we are not the audience being entertained, they are on the stage, we are the privileged audience that sees the ‘real life’ story. We are thus encouraged to absorb the meaning of the story and the subtext. Sally sings the s...
