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Book by Joe Masteroff
Music by John Kander and Fred Ebb
Directed by Russell Blackwood

The sign over the club door reads,
“Here it is Right."

Bawdy and rambunctious, sultry and sly, bent over the back of a chair, you guessed it— Watching Shotgun’s Cabaret is like spying through the keyhole into the delirious and extravagant world of the Weimar Republic. Bra straps and garters are only the surface layer of a steamy underworld electrified by the turmoil and doom that bears down on Berlin in the early ’30s. Cabaret previews on Wednesday, November 30th and Thursday, December 1st, Opens Friday, December 2nd and runs Thursday - Sunday at 8pm until January 15th, at The Ashby Stage in Berkeley.

The Weimar Berlin of Cabaret is in political and economic chaos. There's nobody in charge. Berlin's main industry is sex and nightlife. For a brief window of time, the city writhes, a red light district for all Europe. A Babylon. A Bangkok. The free thinkers, lunatics, artists and whores are having the time of their lives. Nothing stops a schoolboy, heiress or expectant mother from getting a cut of the action. Dressing the part only increases the demand. Vice flourishes, yet violent crime is at an all-time low. Berlin is a playground for unsupervised play, but eventually the games begin to fall apart, the players get distracted, and the bullies take up their bats. Hard and fast rules are rewritten. No one remains a spectator.

Because public criticism was largely prohibited in early German theater, it wasn’t until after WWI that Cabaret performers began to deal with political and social issues onstage. Once they got started there was no telling what you might see; anything from a political satire to a strip show. Between 1919 and 1933, Berlin was at once crumbling at the seams and throbbing with passion. Sexual orientation was on lurid display, even as the dark descended on artistic freedom and the third Reich began knocking down the doors across the city.

The newfound freedom of the Cabaret was, of course, short-lived. The constitution created by the Weimar Republic failed, and Adolf Hitler rose to power, taking German Cabaret culture by the neck as he went. What remains is a magnificent debris of images, personalities, and the exquisite enchantment of this musical, Cabaret.

Shotgun Players production of Cabaret will be directed by Russell Blackwood(Medea). The cast features Shotgun company members Cassidy Brown (The Just, The Death of Meyerhold), Kimberly Dooley (There will be no Trojan War, Vampires), Judy Phillips (Mother Courage, Quills), Clive Worsley (Cyrano de Bergerac, The Miser, The Death of Meyerhold) as well as Daniel Weber, Davina Cohen (Travesties), Eric O’Brien, Jessica Kitchens, Joe Roebuck, Kenneth Scott, Kieran Chavez, Margaret Kelley, Mary Gibboney, Nicole Julien, Rami Margron (Dog Act), Rebecca Noon and Rowan Brooks.

The band includes Shotgun Company Member Daniel Bruno (Mother Courage, Iphigenia in Aulis) on drums, David Malloy on piano, Mark Wieder on stand-up bass, Phil Halseth on Saxophone, Lindsay Leslie and Meghan Smith on Trumpet, among others.

Shotgun Company members Valera Coble (The Miser, The Death of Meyerhold) will design costumes, John Thomas (Mother Courage) will be musical director, and Andrea Weber (Arabian Night) will do choreography. Heather Basarab will design the set, and Robert Ted Anderson (Arabian Night, The Just, Death of Meyerhold) will design the lighting.

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