Thursday, August 09, 2012
KEREN Rickard has never seen a live musical production of Cabaret but as a teen growing up in Gisborne she did see the award-winning 1972 film.
“I absolutely adored it,” she said. “I loved Bob Fosse’s choreography and direction. He did something really different and it was just stunning.”
What she liked most about Cabaret, the director/actor/musician said, was that it was a “concept” musical rather than straight storytelling.
“The songs are a metaphor for the play’s central message about how the Nazis came to power in Berlin in the 1930s . . . a time of intoxicating sexual freedom.
“It asks how this could have happened — how in ordinary people could apathy have turned into complicity, prejudice into racism, and patriotism into fanaticism. It makes us wonder, ‘would I have refused to take a stand?’.”
Given her attraction to the material, Rickard says she was pleased to agree to take the director’s chair for Musical Theatre Gisborne’s production of Cabaret, which it plans to stage in November/December.
So now what she needs is a cast, for which she will this weekend be holding auditions.
Rickard is seeking both chorus members and principal players for characters ranging from the saucy Sally Bowles and the romantic Herr Shultz to closet Nazi Ernst Ludwig and a variety of cabaret performers.
They are not all singing parts but with Rickard anticipating that many performers will fill dual roles, a decent set of pipes would be handy.
And there is still time to get hold of character desciptions and scripts, which are available at Stephen’s PhotoPlus.
“We will be doing the revised version of the show which is quite provocative and controversial, so it will be interesting to see how Gisborne audiences respond,” Rickard said. “But that is what satire is. It can be alluring and beguiling, while at the same time being very, very harsh.”
■ Auditions for Cabaret will be on at the Musical Theatre Gisborne clubrooms on Saturday & Sunday. To book a time, contact (021) 073-4426.