Introduction to Cabaret
Broadway theater, just like many other art forms, directly reflects the sentiments of the people through their performances, whether that be for escapism during the Great Depression or as a response to current events such as the AIDS epidemic or World War II. Cabaret, for one, is a 1966 musical that regards political developments during Weimar Germany, primarily based on Christopher Isherwood’s autobiographical Goodbye to Berlin and the play I am a Camera. This exploration of this musical—whose recent revival won the 2024 Tony Award for Best Revival—seeks to understand how the tone of the musical is set, differences between revivals in how the ending is depicted, and the relationships of revivals with developments in American sentiment over approximately 60 years.
Below are links to the official recordings of each album:
Central Question
This project seeks to find the following question: To what extent do revivals of the musical Cabaret indicate changes in sentiments in culture and to what extent do they change between each production? This exploration looks both toward changes in the ending of the musical between different revivals of the long history of Cabaret as well as the expanse of history through the U.S.