THE CRESCENT PLAYERS TRY TO PROVE LIFE IS A "CABARET"

The Southern Connecticut State University Theatre in collaboration with the Crescent Players is advancing the opinion that "Life is a cabaret" and it is determined to prove it. From Friday, October 9 to Saturday, October 17, you are invited to the proof in the pudding, Come to the Lyman Center Mainstage for this classic musical about Berlin in the1930’s and how people tried to escape reality by dancing and drinking their troubles away.

The ostrich was known for sticking its head in the sand and ignoring the world around it. The same could be argued for the citizens of Berlin when they kept themselves busy partying and dancing and drinking, faster and faster, so they were oblivious to the dangers swirling around them outside the night club doors. In this case it is the Kit Kat Klub and you are invited inside to witness the insidious changes that the party goers are blind to seeing and acknowledging.

Watch as the talented Crescent Players recreates the frantic and frenetic times created so masterfully by Joe Masteroff’s book, John Kander’s music and Fred Ebb’s lyrics in “Cabaret,” based on the play by John Van Druten and stories by Christopher Isherwood.

The welcome mat is securely laid out by the seductive and most accommodating Emcee, Jade McGovern, who urges you to leave all your troubles outside and have a good time, especially with her bevy of Kit Kat Girls to entertain you. Headlining the show is the sparkling singer from Mayfair, England, Miss Sally Bowles, Aliza Clark, with stars in her eyes, who is busy breezing through life seemingly without a care. She dangles men like so much jewelry, using them to accommodate her needs, like the club owner Max and the newcomer to Berlin, the American writer Cliff Bradshaw, Trey Griggs, both naive and trusting.

On the train into Berlin, Cliff meets the dangerously single minded Ernst Ludwig, focused on the Nazi cause, who helps Cliff secure a room at the boarding house of Fraulein Schneider, a hard working and sincere elderly matron. She is busy keeping track of her tenants like the overly friendly to sailors Fraulein Kost, a convincingly enterprising woman,and the greengrocer Herr Schultz, who wants to make Fraulein Schneider his wife. The fact that he is Jewish and she is not becomes an obstacle of elephantine proportions.

Light hearted fun in songs like “Don’t Tell Mama” segue in alarming ways to the themes of “Tomorrow BelongsTo Me,” as it echoes the Nazi message, and the hidden in plain sight discrimination of “If You Could See Her,” as the Emcee dances with her monkey friend. Meanwhile dark clouds obscure the sun, foreshadowing the storm to come, as Larry Nye directs and choreographs this musical with hidden fangs in a decidedly wicked and “wunderbar” way with musical direction by Jill Brunell.

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For tickets($25 and free for SCSU students and children under 12), go to the Lyman Center, 501 Crescent Street, New Haven or online at LymanCenter.org. Performances are Thursday to Saturday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m.

Scrap off the glitter on the surface of the Kit Kat Klub and discover that all is not beautiful, no matter how hard the Emcee tries to make you believe it is so.