Redmayne tells IndieWire about life behind the scenes of “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club,” where he reprises his West End role as The Emcee for Broadway.
Life’s not all a cabaret for film actors making their way to Broadway.
In the case of Eddie Redmayne, who now stars as the ghoul-like and flamboyant Emcee in director Rebecca Frecknall’s “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club” at New York’s August Wilson Theatre, life behind the scenes is more “monastic,” as he told IndieWire, than song-and-dance bacchanalia.
“When you’re doing a musical like this, it’s quite monastic living, and it’s almost more like being an athlete than an actor sometimes because when you’re doing eight shows a week, you’re keeping your voice in decent nick,” said Redmayne, Zooming from the backseat of a car between appointments, which just included lunch with Joel Grey, who famously starred as the Master of Ceremonies in Bob Fosse‘s Oscar-winning 1972 film.
“It’s quite a physical role,” said Redmayne, who first played The Emcee on the West End in 2022, earning a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical. In this just-opened Broadway version, Redmayne sings and dances in gender-bending garb, impishly contorting himself on a 360-degree stage opposite Gayle Rankin as alcoholic cabaret ingénue Sally Bowles.
“I wish I could say I was out living a hedonistic Broadway existence, but actually, you are drinking a ton of water,” Redmayne said. “I haven’t got a huge amount of experience in musicals. I listen to all of our musical theater actors in the piece who give me tips on which voice lozenges to use, and apparently, Lay’s chips, like the oil and the salt in that, [are] very good for keeping your voice moist, and these random Chinese medicines that are good. So I take any piece of advice I can to try and keep me upright basically.”
Redmayne made his Broadway debut with the play “Red” opposite Alfred Molina, earning a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play in 2010. But Redmayne’s musical acumen is limited to the movie “Les Misérables” (he openly called his own musical performance in the film “appallingly sung,” technically speaking) and now “Cabaret.” He displays considerable pipes in this splashy stage show, singing lyrics by Fred Ebb and music by John Kander from the 1960s musical.
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In “Cabaret,” Eddie Redmayne plays the ultimate master of ceremonies: a puckish purveyor of loose morals and tight stockings in Jazz Age Berlin.
But when he’s not onstage at the August Wilson Theatre, which has been stunningly transformed into the decadent Kit Kat Club, the Oscar-winning actor says he has adopted “quite a monastic living.” He and his co-star, Gayle Rankin, are texting around the clock on WhatsApp, feverishly trading intel on vitamin drips, throat-coat teas and Chinese medicines. Backstage, you’ll often find them sharing bottles of Gatorade and bags of Lay’s potato chips (“The oil is very good for your throat!” Redmayne assures us).
“There’s a morbid fascination that we’re enticing all these people to our club to get boozy and be hedonistic, and we’re going to be stone-cold sober,” he jokes on a Monday morning Zoom call. “I had a Negroni last night to celebrate the last show of the week and instantly felt guilty.”
“Guilty and drunk!” Rankin adds with a laugh. “I had an Aperol Spritz and I was like: ‘Woo! This is crazy!’”
Their discipline is all part of keeping up with the rigorous demands of “Cabaret,” a bold and bewitching revival of the classic John Kander and Fred Ebb musical, which opens on Broadway April 21. The story is set in pre-Nazi Germany, where an American writer named Cliff (Ato Blankson-Wood) becomes besotted with a devil-may-care showgirl named Sally Bowles (Rankin), who performs at a seedy nightclub overseen by an eccentric Emcee (Redmayne).
Reimagined by director Rebecca Frecknall and performed in the round, the hypnotic new production gives Broadway audiences an experience unlike any other. Theatergoers can arrive an hour early to the club, where they’re whisked through a neon-lit back alley and greeted with free shots of peach schnapps. Inside is a sort of debaucherous Disneyland: allowing guests to roam upstairs to various themed bars, where scantily clad dancers beckon you through beaded curtains and glitter-painted musicians straddle their instruments. Emblems of eyes follow you everywhere, from the club’s ornate wallpaper to a giant, golden disco ball at the entrance.
The idea is to make the audience “discombobulated,” Redmayne says. “You’re being performed to by an extraordinary prologue cast. All of this is to will you to leave your troubles behind, so by the time (the actual show starts), we can seduce and compel you into a space where the story is the thing.”
Throughout the show, Redmayne leers at the crowd from the edge of the stage and slinks around tables of dining guests. During the sultry opening number, “Willkommen,” Rankin’s Sally shakes hands and stumbles over audience members as she wanders through the mezzanine.
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Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin will bring some Weimar decadence to Broadway.
The pair will star as The Emcee and Sally Bowles in a new and immersive production of “Cabaret.” The show, dubbed “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club,” was a sensation when it debuted in London with Redmayne and Jessie Buckley. A Broadway transfer has been buzzed about almost as soon as the the production across the pond was first unveiled. Rebecca Frecknall, who spearheaded the show, returns as director along with designer Tom Scutt. It will play at the August Wilson Theatre.
Previews will begin April 1, 2024. The production will have win opening night gala celebrations starting April 20, with the official press opening on April 21.
In London’s West End the show was a hot ticket, winning seven Olivier Awards, the most for any musical revival in the awards’ history. Like that show, “Cabaret” will be performed in the round, with the auditorium decked out with “dreamlike spaces” which guests will be invited to explore before the show starts. These will feature entertainment, drinks and dining, all of it evoking a certain pre-World War II period of German late night history.
“It was whilst playing ‘The Emcee’ in a student production of ‘Cabaret’ over 25 years ago that my love for theater was properly ignited,” Redmayne said. “It now feels completely thrilling and a little surreal to be a part of Rebecca’s truly unique vision of Masteroff, Kander and Ebb’s brilliance as it arrives on Broadway, where the piece has such a history. I am beyond excited to be doing it arm-in-arm with the remarkable Gayle Rankin and a truly stunning cast and team. I am hoping we will create an experience for you quite unlike any other.”
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Redmayne and co-star Jessie Buckley both won 2022 Olivier Awards for their performances.
The Olivier-winning revival of Cabaret is getting a cast recording. The album will feature the Olivier-winning performances of Eddie Redmayne as The Emcee and Jessie Buckley as Sally Bowles. Redmayne’s “Willkommen” and Buckley’s “Mein Herr” will hit streaming platforms December 21, with the full release following January 20, 2023.
The Rebecca Frecknall-directed production of the Tony-winning 1966 Broadway musical, currently running at London’s Kit Kat Club (a.k.a. the renovated Playhouse Theatre), officially opened December 12, 2021. The original cast also featured Omari Douglas as Cliff Bradshaw, Liza Sadovy as Fraulein Schneider, Elliot Levey as Herr Schultz, Stewart Clarke as Ernst Ludwig, and Anna-Jane Casey as Fraulein Kost with Josh Andrews, Emily Benjamin, Sally Frith, Matthew Gent, Emma Louise Jones, Ela Lisondra, Theo Maddix, Chris O’Mara, Daniel Perry, Andre Refig, Christopher Tendai, Bethany Terry, Lillie-Pearl Wildman, and Sophie Maria Wojna.
The London production also features a new addition: a Prologue Company of nine actors, dancers, and musicians, who welcome audiences to the world of the club as they arrive at the theatre. The initial Prologue Company consisted of Gabriela Bendetti, Rachel Benson, Laura Braid, Julian Capolei, Hollie Cassar, Celine Fortenbacher-Popławska, Samantha Ho, Andrew Linnie, and Sally Swanson with an original score composed by Angus MacRae.
Since last October, the revival has been led by Callum Scott Howells and Madeline Brewer as The Emcee and Sally Bowles (respectively) with Sid Sagar as Cliff Bradshaw, Danny Mahoney as Ernst Ludwig, and Michelle Bishop as Fraulein Kost.
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Take a Look Inside Rehearsal for London Cabaret Starring Eddie Redmayne
Rehearsals are underway for the upcoming London revival of Cabaret. The musical, starring Oscar, Tony, and Olivier winner Eddie Redmayne as the Emcee, is set to begin performances at London’s Kit Kat Club (the renovated Playhouse Theatre) November 15.
Based on the play by John Van Druten and stories by Christopher Isherwood, Cabaret tells the story of singer Sally Bowles, who performs at the decadent Kit Kat Klub as the Nazi Party quietly takes hold of 1930s Berlin. The show features music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and a book by Joe Masteroff.
You can go to the gallery to take a look to the photos.
Cabaret (2021) > Rehearsal (November 2021)
A tentative smile spreads across Eddie Redmayne’s face. “Anxiety is something that drives me,” he says quietly. “It has for a long time. Ultimately, I think, you only live once. If it’s a catastrophe, I got to play a part that always felt unfinished in me. If I don’t do it, then perhaps I will just live with regret.”
We are sitting in the gilded splendor of Fischer’s, a restaurant specializing in Austrian food in the Marylebone area of London, discussing Redmayne’s bold decision to return to the stage as the charismatic and mysterious Emcee in Cabaret. (Redmayne was last seen onstage 10 years ago, as Shakespeare’s Richard II; before that he starred in Red, as the fictional assistant of Mark Rothko, winning a Tony.) He’s chosen the restaurant because he likes the area—only when we order schnitzel and cucumber salad does he realize what an appropriate setting it is to talk about Berlin in 1929.
When Cabaret opens in London in November, it will be the second time Redmayne has played this part. He first gave it a go at 19, in a student production at the Edinburgh Fringe festival just after he left Eton. It was staged in a grotty, run-down venue called Underbelly. “I didn’t really see daylight, and became quite skeletal, and I remember finding it thrilling.” Fast-forward 20 years and that excitement is still there. So is Underbelly, which, under the guidance of its founders, Ed Bartlam and Charlie Wood, has morphed into an influential producing company that hosts festivals in London and Edinburgh and has produced hit shows. It was Bartlam who approached Redmayne to play the part again; Redmayne then asked Jessie Buckley, star of Wild Rose and Judy, whether she’d like to take on Sally Bowles, the singer whose story gives Cabaret its heart. “Jessie has this extraordinary spirit and an anarchic quality,” he says.
“It was a kind of no-brainer,” explains Buckley over Zoom from Toronto, where she has been filming Sarah Polley’s Women Talking. “I feel it’s like a blank canvas, a chance to go back to the theater and fall in love, which I haven’t done since my first job”—when she was cast in Trevor Nunn’s production of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. Playing Sally, Buckley will be able to draw on her own experience as a young singer, fresh from Kerry in Ireland, when she worked in London’s Annabel’s nightclub. “It was so far away from where I grew up,” she says, “a world of secrets.” Buckley is an enthusiast, full of energy and commitment. “For Eddie it’s a passion project, and I was delighted he thought of me,” she says, smiling broadly. Continue reading »
Eddie Redmayne will return to London theatre, for his first West End role in 10 years, to play the Emcee in Cabaret opposite Jessie Buckley as Sally Bowles. An intimate revival of the classic musical is set to recreate the Weimar-era Kit Kat Club for an audience capped at 550 from this November.
The show will be designed by Tom Scutt, choreographed by Julia Cheng and directed by Rebecca Frecknall, whose acclaimed Almeida production of Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke transferred to the West End in 2018.
Frecknall said Cabaret had always been “dear to my heart”, and that she was in awe of her creative team, “who have come together to create a bold new production as well as a new Kit Kat Club, a bespoke home where we can truly embrace and unlock the world of Cabaret for a new audience”.
The show – which charts the friendship between Sally, an American performer at the riotous Kit Kat, and a shy Brit, Brian – is set against the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Berlin and unflinchingly depicts antisemitism and persecution. Frecknall said it was an important musical and that its revival comes “at a time when its themes and atmosphere feel so contemporary and resonant”.
With music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb and a book by Joe Masteroff, Cabaret is based on the play by John Van Druten and stories by Christopher Isherwood. It opened on Broadway in 1966 and won eight Tony awards; the 1972 film version picked up the same number of Oscars. Joel Grey played the lascivious Emcee both on stage and screen, performing in the musical numbers that interlink the drama. Grey told the Guardian last year that Cabaret took on a “heinous and terrifying subject: the Holocaust” at a time when “there were a lot of people who just wanted to forget about it. They tried to write it out of textbooks.”
Redmayne first played the Emcee 20 years ago in an Edinburgh fringe production. His last West End roles were in Red (in 2009), as the assistant of painter Mark Rothko (played by Alfred Molina), and as Shakespeare’s Richard II (in 2011), both of which were staged at the Donmar Warehouse. Buckley was recently acclaimed for her performance in a film version of Romeo and Juliet shot at the National Theatre. [Source]
The production is expected to begin performances at Playhouse Theatre in November 2021.
According to Baz Bamigboye of The Daily Mail, Kander and Ebb’s classic musical Cabaret is headed back to the West End stage in an all-new production.
According to the report, Academy Award-winning actor Eddie Redmayne and BAFTA nominee Jessie Buckley are currently in final talks to portray the Emcee and Sally Bowles, respectively.
The production is expected to begin performances at Playhouse Theatre in November 2021.
Two-time BAFTA nominee Jessie Buckley was most recently seen in the National Theatre film production of Romeo and Juliet. Buckley first rose to recognition as a finalist on the Oliver! reality competition series, I’d Do Anything. She has been seen on the West End in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. Her notable screen credits include Chernobyl, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, and Fargo. Her film roles include Beast and Wild Rose.
On Broadway, Redmayne co-starred with Alfred Molina in the award-winning John Logan play RED for which he took home a Tony Award for Featured Actor in a Play in 2010. He originated the role at the Donmar Warehouse in London where he won the coveted Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor. His film work includes the Les Miserables, Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Danish Girl, and The Theory of Everything, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Cabaret features some of the best-known songs in musical theatre, including “Willkommen,” “Maybe This Time” and “Cabaret.”
The musical premiered on Broadway in 1966 and won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, in addition to the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, the Outer Critics’ Circle Award, the Variety Poll of New York Critics, and London’s Evening Standard Award. [Source]
