'What good is sitting alone in your room, come hear the music play...'

If I had to list my top five musicals, then Cabaret* would be in there. So when I learned that the recent London production was to tour, I also knew that I wanted to see it.

When I saw the casting, however, I was slightly less enthusiastic. Wayne Sleep as the Emcee? Well, he played that part when I last saw a touring production about 20 years ago, and he was very good, but I’m not sure he or I have benefitted much from the passing years. Then I read that Samantha Barks had been cast as Sally Bowles. As the ‘Nancy’ who came third in ‘I’d Do Anything’, she was most remarkable for being very young, for John Barrowman struggling to find any emotion behind the eyes, and a rather unfortunate memory of Barry Humphries being a bit pervy in his ‘admiration’. I’ve always seen Sally as a role for an actress who can sing a bit, rather than a singer who can act a bit, as the point is that she’s really not very good. Judi Dench, who was the original West End Sally, has always seemed to me to be perfect casting. Would Samantha be up to the part?

Sadly no. She did seem too young – her mother would still have had her in school, not let her loose in Berlin! When Sally sings ‘Maybe this time’, it should feel like the song of someone who’s been through the emotional mill and is finally daring to hope again, but it wasn’t there. I feel Sally should break your heart a little with her wilful blindness to what is going on around her, but she didn’t. Instead the emotional heart of the story was the romance between the boarding house keeper Fraulein Schneider and Herr Shultz, the Jewish shop keeper.

It was an odd audience, with very little reaction or response, and they didn’t seem to get the show they were expecting as there was an air of shock at some of the nudity (a lot of which I did feel was gratuitous).

As for the ending, well, it didn’t ‘offend’ me, but I’m not sure if it added anything. You already know what will happen to this society under the Nazis, you don’t need to see it. What I love about the usual ending is that things seem to be contining as they were before, but we know they’re not. Cliff decides to wake up, and leave. Sally stays. That’s all we need to know.

*I still remember John Doyle’s fabulous production at York Theatre Royal back in 1995.