You have to understand the way I am, Mein Herr

We went along to see the West End version of Cabaret last night, with its new cast including Julian Clary as Emcee - and what a stunning show!

Everyone should know the story, not least from the classic film version with Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey and Michael York. But Bill Kenwright's production at the Lyric takes the story back to its original, darker tale of doomed decadence in the rise to supremacy of the Nazis.

Mr Clary may not be many people's first choice to portray the sleazy and bitter "face" of the underbelly of pre-war Berlin nightclub life - known as he is for his slightly precious and undemonstrative style of humour. But he rose to the challenge admirably, together with the rest of the bawdy ensemble at the "Kit Kat Club". His version of Money, Money in particular was a superb tour de force!

Our Sally Bowles for this performance was understudy Rebecca Bainbridge, who was marvellous in the role. She captured the essence of Sally: a middle-class good-time girl gone bad, trapped in a world where pleasure is everything, oblivious to the fact that the whole thing is about to crash horribly around her - belting out cracked torch songs like Maybe This Time and of course Cabaret in defiance of the fact she, and all the others, are living on borrowed time.

The staging was great, with suitably sleazy touches - a lot of nudity (male and female), whole scenes performed entirely on or in beds, and cast members writhing about on ladders and scaffolding. And the raucus showstoppers Two Ladies, Don't Tell Mama and Mein Herr were all spectacular.



As time progresses and Nazism begins to take over, so the central stories that make up this brilliant show - not just Sally and Clifford's tangled relationship, but the love affair between landlady Fraulein Schneider and Jewish Herr Schultz, and the slow rise of what began as minor characters Ernst Ludwig and Fraulein Kost - get darker and darker, and you soon realise that in this fairytale there will be no happy endings...

We've been to a lot of West End shows in our time, but this is the first time I have ever witnessed total stunned silence as the curtain falls at the end - absolutely gob-smacking.

To understand exactly why, you have to go and see it. Altogether this is an excellent show, and highly recommended...

Cabaret reviewed in the Daily Telegraph