Review: Cabaret, Bristol Hippodrome (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Review: Cabaret, Bristol Hippodrome

9:10am Wednesday 25th November 2009 in Theatre & Arts By Craig Evry

Resembling a German Carry On film, brimming with bare flesh and slap and tickle, Cabaret envelops you into the decadent heart of 1930s Berlin.

Be prepared for acres of flesh and dancers of all sizes in skin tight black leather outfits, even the pint-sized Wayne Sleep, who plays Emcee - the catty and sinister master of ceremonies at the seedy Kit Kat Club, where the action unfolds.

Cabaret is a show of two halves - the first being a saucy, comical romp, chronicling the meeting of Kit Kat’s star performer Sally Bowles (Siobhan Dillon) and the bisexual, aspiring American novelist, Clifford Bradshaw (Henry Luxemburg).

The darker second half, focuses on the advancing Nazi threat, and its destructive impact on the lives of the central characters, bringing their party lifestyles to a shuddering halt and sending them into depression or drunken despair.

Siobhan Dillon has a versatile and powerful voice, that's never in question, but her take on Sally Bowles’ is rather more screechy housewife than sophisticated socialite, while the overall production, in my view, loses out in the slickness stakes to shows like Chicago and Rent.

Praise has to be given to the producers though, for avoiding a show-stopping ending, opting instead for a gloomy and subdued finale, giving a poignant sense of the horrors to come in Nazi-controlled Germany.