'There Are No Troubles Here'.
Is art, love, and beauty a solution to our troubles, or only an escape? The answer is in 'Cabaret'.
“Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome,” so sings the master of ceremonies at the beginning of Cabaret. Freunde, friend, are you sad or troubled about all that is happening? Are you lonely, doomscrolling, and hopelessly depressed? Put down your little screen, place your worries aside, and come to Cabaret. “There are no troubles here,” the master of ceremonies says from the stage. It is cold and frightening outside, but in Cabaret’s Kit Kat Club the world is full of singing, dancing, and laughter. In here life is beautiful, the people are beautiful, and everything is beautiful. What else could a person ask for?
Cabaret has a very special story for you, whether you watch the film or the stage production. Performing all nights is a young writer who hopes to finally write his novel. He is joined by a beautiful young singer with ambitions of performing on the great stages of the world. Hmmm, a potential love interest, perhaps? If dramas about starving artists is not quite enough for you, Cabaret has oh so much more: a pitched battle between hatred and love, a perfectly marvelous throuple, a special new number by a beautiful jugend in a dazzling brown shirt, and a clash over what some are calling ‘the end of the world’. Mein Gott!
It is 1931, in the city of Berlin, in the country of Germany, and everything is so confusing! But what is a person to do? You could rot in your room, obsess over the news, and bite your nails until the cuticles are sore. But what good is that? Leben a little, live a little, you only have one shot at life after all! And what better place is there to start than in a dark room with your own table, where you can watch beautiful people sing and dance? It is just as the great Sally Bowles will sing to you later, “What good is it sitting alone in your room? Come here the music play. Life is a cabaret, old chum.” Bleibe, reste, stay.
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Part I: ‘Perfectly Marvelous’
A familiar beginning: a young writer has an idea for a book. And of course the only way to write a novel is by abandoning all of your responsibilities — from your work, to your people, to even your country. The writer is English in the film, American on the stage, but the biography doesn’t seem to matter. He is a writer, with dreams of finishing a very beautiful novel, and he has decided to move to Berlin while he writes his important book. He finds the cheapest little apartment he can get. He lands a side-gig teaching English to ambitious little Germans; a working guy, the heiress of a department store, a well-sculpted man who is strangely active in a mysterious political party. The writer has barely enough money, but who cares? What writer has money anyways!? He is writing literature! Money is unwichtig, unimportant: leave the bucks and marks to the bankers. His business is writing and living well. And business is good.
And then there is Sally Bowles. She is a singer and dancer at the Kit Kat Club. She is American in the film, English on the stage, bourgeois or dirt-poor, brunette or blonde. The biography doesn’t matter, because she is a bundle of life and energy hurtling forwards at all moments. She believes she can transcend her body through the sheer energy of music and art, and isn’t that so lovely? What is more beautiful than a person who has thrown their whole being into the vocation of creating music and joy?
Our young writer, the little recluse, is of course drawn to the city, to the nighttime, and to the bright lights of the Kit Kat Club. And who is there but Sally Bowles? She sings, she dances, and she is perfectly marvelous. What is possibly more beautiful than a person in the spotlight, with their bright big smile and the room focused all on them? The writer is shy, apprehensive, and guarded, but here is a woman who is everything he is not! You know how the story goes, because it is an old story told in every single language: a smile across the room, an introduction, a drink, a dance, and then the eek eek eek of the bed springs in a Berlin bedroom. Wunderbar!
Ah, but maybe you’re tired of couple’s romances. I know I am. So boring. The more people, the better! Why not a delicious little dalliance between Sally Bowles, her writer, and a special third guest? Love triangles are all the rage nowadays. Even a certain ‘Marxist’ novelist recently wrote a story about a man stuck between two lovers… But here in Cabaret there are no troubles, and certainly no word-games; just singing and dancing and the eek-eek-eeks of a city that is ravenous for life. After all, in what other piece of art will you get a love triangle between a novelist, a singer, and a baron with vague business ties to Argentina? Köstlich!
Oh, but maybe that’s too frivolous for you. Maybe your characters need to be upstanding citizens, hard-workers, and perfect little normale menschen, normal people. Well, Cabaret has that too! In the film there is a charming young German man who develops a liking for the quiet brunette beauty in his English class, Frau Landauer. On the stage you’ll get a blossoming possibility between the kindly shop owner Herr Schultz and a world-weary landlady named Fräulein Schneider. Ah, what will happen? Smiles, polite flirting, perhaps a brief dance, a special little song that encapsulates all of the convoluted feelings, and then elation, joy, and wonderful music. So wunderschön.
But there is a little problem. An itty-bitty quirk. One of the people in each of these two additional pairings carries extra baggage, a bit of a.. complication... It is in the film’s brunette student, and the theatre production’s generous shop owner. Strangers whisper about it, and acquaintances vaguely allude to the unspoken thing. ‘Oh Frau Landauer und Herr Schultz are, you know a-’
Shhhhh! Nein, nicht mehr, we will not say the word. There are no troubles here!
But our lovebirds, fortunately, do not listen to the detractors. They are in love. Let the others say what they want. Love conquers all, from inconveniences to hatred. And nearly all of our lovers reach their pinnacle of success; Heiraten. Marriage. Stability, a home, a person to fall asleep next to, full bellies, a child or two, a crystal bowl full of fresh fruit, and a perfectly marvelous love in a perfectly marvelous life. A happy ending, isn’t it? What could possibly get in the way of such love?
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Part II: ‘Money’
The couples glide through life within domestic bliss. Love is a translucent bubble that floats above the world. Everything else is blurry; all that matters is their beautiful love. But thoughts begin to creep in, muffled at first. Isn’t this apartment a bit too small? Our bed is too narrow, all of Berlin can hear us tossing around. Wait, Sally, how many reichsmarks do you have saved up? Six!? Oh, God. Things are clarifying, suddenly. People are lining up in the streets for thin potato soup. We can barely afford the rent. A beer is triple the price it used to be. Ick, all of this inflation, how can a person afford to have fun anymore? The unpublished manuscript is not making us any money. Maybe it is time to stop writing. How will we eat? Well, we will find work. But none of the places are hiring. Sally reassures the writer that there are jobs, there is always a job available, ‘you could work at a bank’, she says halfheartedly. But the banks aren’t even open! There are pictures in the newspapers of children hauling wheelbarrows full of reichsmarks to buy a single loaf of bread!
Sally sings more at the Kit Kat Club, but it doesn’t make a dent. The writer takes an odd job smuggling suitcases full of money for a mysterious political movement… Don’t ask questions. A job is a job. How bad could it be? But even with this extra money it is not enough. The writer sits in front of the mirror and looks at his reflection. The drab olive-green overcoat no longer fits across his shoulders. The collar bulges out. It feels like his ribcage is pushing past his skin. The jawline is making a sharp mountain range in his cheeks. His face is sagging, everyone’s face is changing, all of Germany is the Otto Dix drawing of worms and maggots wiggling out of a skull. We need work. We need food. The soul, yes, the soul, but can love buy bread?
“Money makes the world go around,” the master of ceremonies sings. “A mark, or a yen, or a buck, or a pound,” it is the same fact everywhere. The rich know this, and the poor know this. It is a simple fact of the universe, like the law of gravity, but all modern life seems intent on you forgetting it. The men wear their loose-fitting clothes, and the women apply blush to their cheeks with blood from their fingertips. But as long as you can sing and drink and dance the troubles are momentarily vergessen, forgotten. You can sit in a café or a biergarten, buzzed on your empty stomach, and if you smile widely enough you can trick everyone, including yourself. Look at you, you are happy, drinking this beer at the bar, while you silently wonder if you have enough credit left over to cover the charge.
But then the spell is lifted, somehow. A hangover. The morning after. Cold water to the face. You lie awake in your bed listening to the growling in your stomach. Faces are grey and ashen. Your wrists start to ache, and there is a copper taste in your throat. You are not hungry but hunger, a restless need to consume and satiate. A person will do anything for themselves and their children in such a state. What would you do? You need solutions, yes. Some offer a scapegoat. The rich and the powerful. But what difference does a scapegoat make? You cannot eat a scapegoat! You cannot eat a system! Again, you are a person that is dying, you cannot wait for structural reforms, or the revolution, or even the next election. You must eat now, from whatever hands offer it.
But then there is art. What to do with beauty in these ugly times? Can you drink a poem? Can you eat a novel? The bulk of the artists have not changed their tune. They are writing their books and painting their portraits. Perhaps the surfaces of their work have changed, but the interiors are mostly the same: hollow, unfulfilling. Where is the sustenance and the calories? Where is the big art that proposes alternatives? Where is the art that drags us out from the lonely dark and into the light? Cabaret says ‘here, I will show you’.
In the stage production the song is played on a record player in the middle of a dark room, it crackles through the room like a flickering candle. In the film we hear the song at a biergarten, and what is more beautiful than a biergarten in the autumn, with its oranges and yellows spread across a village tucked within the country, its stone walls covered by hops and vines. In the Kat Kat Club the audience sits anonymously in the dark, but here in the biergarten everyone is in the sunshine at long wooden tables together. There is no noticeable difference between one another. Everyone is seated with neighbors and strangers. The tables are piled with pretzels and wursts. Everyone has a healthy stein of Kölsch, as it should be. Food and a little treat. Das Leben ist schön, the beautiful life is here, everyone is fed and cared for collectively. There are smiles, and laughter, and everything seems fixed. Now it is time for art again. A pretty little song to listen to while we digest. An accordion begins to play. From the crowd stands a young boy, wearing a brown shirt and a sharp black tie. He begins to sing a sickly sweet folk tune about a stag running free through a meadow, a forest, the leafy linden, the Rhine giving its gold to the sea, “but somewhere a glory awaits, unseen / tomorrow belongs to me,” the lyrics go, but then the song begins to turn, his voice rises, “But soon says a whisper arise, arise,” and the people in the biergarten all begin to stand and sing, “Oh Fatherland, Fatherland, show us a sign,” the girls in their dirndls sing along with the men in their suits, and the singing has turned into yelling, and shouting, and conducting the song is the young boy in his uniform with the red armband and the black symbol inside of the white circle, and up goes his arm in the angled salute, the notes crescendo, and here in the biergarten the audiences sing, and they love the new music, with its promise of the world belonging exclusively to them, and the hunger has been filled but now it is growing into a force all its own, and with all great performances it is a universally acknowledged truth that the audiences will stand, and cheer, and demand an even bigger encore.
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Part III: ‘What Would You Do?’
It is 1931 in the city of Berlin, in the country of Germany, and the children in the brownshirts are everywhere, and they are singing their songs, but at least we still have the essential things. Sally Bowles and her writer can still sing, and dance, and live deliciously in Berlin. Sure, a storm is brewing. Even the posters on the city walls are changing. They were once full of rectangular figures holding red flags and hammers, but now they are filled with beautiful blonde families with wide smiles, or grotesque smirking faces with hooked noses. Sally Bowles never sees the changes. Why should she? The writer, now her husband, can’t help but notice. He has even been reading the bestselling memoir of a certain mustachioed leader. But why would Sally care? She is an artist. Her first obligation is always to her beautiful work. And besides, what can she do as a lonely individual? “It will all work itself out,” she tells the writer. “After all it’s only politics. What has that got to do with us?” They are in the business of art, and business is booming. So many people are flocking to Cabaret with its promise of troubles verboten. Their old mantra holds true: love and beauty über alles.
But the other couples are struggling. The whispers about Fräulein Landauer and Herr Schultz are becoming vocal, and public. At their engagement party Fräulein Schneider is pulled aside by one of her dear friends, Herr Ludwig. Ludwig is high up in the party of the brownshirts, and he tells Fräulein Schneider that she cannot under any circumstances marry Herr Schultz. She is distraught. What is she to do? She loves Herr Schultz dearly, he is so kind, genuine, hardworking. But he is proving to be a liability. If she marries him, she could lose her home, her friends, or even her very noble and dignified job as a landlord. Ack, it is all so risky. She has been alone and miserable all her life, so much so that she calls it “the old despair”. But what is quiet desperation versus hunger and unemployment and the risk of a brick through the window? Maybe being in love is not worth all this trouble, she thinks.
When Sally Bowles and the writer hear her logic, even they are distraught. Sure, it’s not like their relationship is perfect, in all fairness. But they would never abandon the promise of love out of such a cold calculation. “You cannot give up so easily,” the writer says to Fräulein Schneider, to which she says; “Oh yes I can.” It is easy for Sally and the writer to talk in such a way. If things get bad, the artists will just pack up and leave for Paris, or London, or whatever great city they can escape to. As much as they sing about the world, they dream of floating above it. They are only meaningfully tied to their art and themselves. Fräulein Schneider is not so young and full of hope, she says. She has to live here, in the world of money and bread.
But still, love. She goes to Herr Schultz to confront him. Schultz is exactly as he always is; charming, lighthearted, self-effacing. He walks her through all of the reasons it will be okay. Yes, this ridiculous political party hates the kind of person he is, but it will all pass. It is all just noise that will get drowned out by more responsible voices. Besides, he is her age too, he has seen the world, and he absolutely knows a thing or two about this country that hates him. “After all what am I? A German,” he says laughing. And he pokes a little more fun at the whole idea of them calling off the wedding and asks; well, what would you rather us do, wait to get married until the results of the next election? They laugh at that, because in the next elections in 1932 the incredibly competent Social Democratic Party will resoundingly win the election against both the Reds and the browns, and everyone will get to say tschüss forever to that schmuck with the mustache and the angry voice. Yes, that is exactly what will happen, so say the experts.
How does it end? The movie, the musical, the history – all of it. As an audience member you are taught to suspend disbelief with a work of fiction, because most fiction fails without a bit of audience effort. Cabaret barely requires that suspension. Like all good art it is so big, honest, and complex that it might as well be fact, because it is full of Truth, and it never lies to you. With Cabaret you can sit there and put in minimal effort, if you want, but you can also watch listen to the music hundreds of time yet still be changed by it each time. Let the music wash over you, and it will work its magic. Most people wade through a story expecting resolution, but Cabaret resists the impulse too, even when you want it. In some ways each one of us knows how the world in Cabaret will end, but still we watch, because of the characters. What will happen to Sally, and the writer, and Fräulein Schneider, and everyone else? It is all up in the air. But is it, really? If you follow these characters, and treat them like real people, it’s likely that you know exactly what they will do. Once you toss aside endings, plots, and narrative arcs, all you are left with are reflections. If you were the writer, what would you do? If you were Sally, what would you do? The impulse is to reach for the ‘right’ answer, the one that leads to a happy ending, or to work from the knowledge of history that the characters don’t have, or the convenient answers that we wish to tell ourselves. But what would you really do if you were up there on that stage, in the city of Berlin, in 1931, at what some people called the end of the world?
Cabaret is uncompromising in its vision. Because it is serious piece of art, it holds its characters up to high standards. It can appear to be a harsh world with little that is redeemable. But it is honest, and because of that it is beautiful. Frighteningly beautiful. In the film the couple — the young man and the English student, Frau Landauer — get a rare moment of grace. They stand together in the glow of stained glass that catches the moonlight from the walls of a temple. They bow their heads as the man in the robes and shawl says ‘Baruch atah Adonai’. On the stage, the couple — Fräulein Schneider and Herr Schultz — get their moment in the spotlight too. They dance in the center of the stage, and they sing their song of Heiraten. Marriage. The moonlight pours in through the windows, lighting the ground they dance upon. This is the dream of so many artists: love conquers all. Love births a world so strong and resilient that it can resist everything ugly and evil. It is so alluring. It is something we want to believe. Even at this late stage in the musical, with all the terror and evil that has occurred, love is still an option. The cord is dangled as a way out of the chaos. If you don’t wish to join with a mass of people, then you can do this: hold onto love and our interpersonal bonds. Perhaps we can overcome hatred in our small little bubbles. If we only cling onto what is truly beautiful, maybe then we have a chance. The musical does not end here; it technically ends later, and it’s possible that it ends even earlier. But whichever moment or song that you pin as the closing number, it always ends the same: the sound of crashing symbols in the orchestra, the shimmering of glass, and the answer to the question prompted by a reflection. What would you do? And the answer, the same each and every time you watch it: you would go to the Cabaret.
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