Cabaret - Tampere, September 2008

I've never been that fond of the musical Cabaret but since it happened to play near me and had good actors, I figured I might give it a try. I was yawning in the first act, but luckily I got into the mood better in the second act when Sally stopped being too annoying (or was less on stage...).

I was afraid of what Heikki Kinnunen, one of the very legendary actors in Finland, would be like as Emcee. He is a good actor, but he's quite old and not the type of man you would desire to see in Emcee's costumes, hugging a plastic Barbara. He definitely was an excellent Emcee, though, in a very twisted and scary way. I'm not going to get over the image of him and a whip in a while. :P Like a twisted nightmare you can't help liking. Seeing him slowly rise from under the stage in a nazi uniform, with red light coming from under him, illuminating his grin... It's a sight I won't easily forget.

Elsa Saisio as Sally Bowles was good as well, though I can't stand the character. But what a voice she has! The American man whose name I never heard properly was nice as well, though nothing spectacular. But I adored Fräulein Schneider and Herr Schulz, they were so sweet together! I was so sad to see him in the train with the other Jews in the end. :'( This was again one of those musicals where I was more interested in the other characters than in the story of the young lovers. Though I guess that in this case the older couple represented the real young lovers.

I loved the staging and the atmosphere it created. They had made the stage look like a railway station, with only a bed and some plain movable walls that had been made to look like cars of trains in addition to the pillars, clock, etc. of the station. The orchestra was playing in the back of the stage. The conductor was dressed in only a black vest and trousers and he looked so much like the Black Vampire in the Hungarian Tanz Der Vampire that I couldn't help laughing. Especially when he came to the actual stage during bows and turned out to be a short and quite tubby man very unlike Ákos Tihanyi. ;)