Cabaret

Synopsis: The scene is the Kit Kat Klub, a night club in Berlin, as the 1920s are drawing to a close. The Master of Ceremonies welcomes the audience to the show and assures them that, whatever their troubles, they will forget them at the Cabaret. The entire orchestra is onstage, and the actors play along with it when they are not part of the dialogue. Cliff, a young American writer, meets Ernst, a German who surprises Cliff by putting his briefcase among Cliff’s luggage at the German border. When we revisit the Klub at the end, much is changed, and show ends with a stark foreshadowing of things to come: The Emcee strips off his overcoat to reveal a concentration camp prisoner’s uniform marked with a yellow Star of David and a pink triangle, and the backdrop rises to reveal an electric barbed-wire fence.