Holding a Mirror to Ourselves
Two plays in New York bookend the rise and fall of Nazism in Europe. But their message turns on the audience and asks: what role do we play?
“The party in Berlin is over,” Cliff tells Sally Bowles during the last day of the Weimar Republic.
The American wants to leave Berlin. He is disgusted with the hatred brought on by the Nazis, who are growing in strength. His time there, though brief, was illuminating: he wrote, explored his sexuality, and unknowingly transported Nazi briefcases back and forth to Paris for a few dollars. He had also frequented the Kit Kat Club, filled with the odds and ends of cabaret performers and was expecting a child with the English ex-pat Sally.
At a recent performance of “Cabaret” on Broadway, Cliff tells Sally – who seems to be unfazed by the looming Nazi power around her because the politics don’t apply to her – that if you don’t stand for anything, you’ll fall for anything. An applause broke out in the audience and interrupted the dialogue on stage.
It seemed fitting for the audience to interrupt in that moment; not just for the power of the line, but because of the particular immersion in this production of “Cabaret.” From the beginning, the audience is made to feel like they are at the real Kit Kat Club. The audience is led through the bowels of the August Wilson Theater on Broadway; you first see New York City’s alleyways instead of a grand ballroom entrance. Actors sing and dance and play instruments in the common areas as you order drinks and move to your seats. Inside, bistro tables surround a sunken stage in the center of the theater. So when a line’s delivery particularly resonates, you want to cheer or jeer as if you’re watching it reveal itself in real life.
That line, about the unwillingness to stand for anything, is a deviation from the original musical script that speaks to the times. When I went to the performance, it was the two year anniversary of Roe v. Wade being repealed - among the first major times the Supreme Court had revoked rights rather than expanded them. Days later, Trump would look presidential against the aging Joe Biden in a debate and the Supreme Court would rule that a president would have immunity for official acts. Which acts, are not yet defined. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor posited what would happen if a president ordered “the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival?”
“Immune,” she determined.
Meanwhile, Downtown, an off-Broadway play bookended the Nazi rise and fall. “Here There Are Blueberries” is set in present time but features Holocaust museum curators happening upon a curious photo album: a series of photos show women racing to eat bowls of blueberries. One pretends to cry when it’s empty. Other official-looking men are lounging outside of a chalet. The groups of them are enjoying summer in the fields.
We learn that these are not just any Germans. These are Nazi top-brass and their colleagues enjoying time at an adult summer camp as a reprieve and reward, just in the shadows of Auschwitz. Shockingly, the play is based off of a real story and a real photo album.
Clearly, the party is only over for some people… those with power carry on, enjoying summertime as they’ve always had.
These two plays offer a glimpse into humanity for the oppressed and the oppressors for the worst travesty in human history. Taken together, you see how even the people who are the targets have a range of reactions: questioning the inevitable or preparing for the worst. But you also see how the perpetrators viewed themselves as cogs in the wheel , passing responsibility on to the next and the next. But “Here There Are Blueberries” questions what happens if you don’t speak out. No matter how small the act you play in the Nazi regime, is there not strength in numbers if you join the dissent? If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.
A storyline in this play grapples with how history is told: the curators of the Holocaust Museum wonder how much focus should be put on the perpetrators. Their mission had long been to focus on the victims; but is there no value in learning how regular citizens can become monsters? How can your neighbors be swept up in a genocidal machine?
My companion to the play remarked on the audience viewing “Blueberries:” older, largely Jewish, certainly descendants of Holocaust survivors. He wondered whether there were elements that would ring true after the war in Gaza. What role do we have in condoning or condemning violence?
In the 1993 production of “Cabaret”
director Sam Mendes chose for his emcee, played by the hyper-sexualized Alan Cumming, to reveal himself in the final scene wearing a striped uniform, worn by the victims of the death camps.
In this 2024 production, director Rebecca Frecknall chooses to go back to the staging: this emcee dons the Nazi uniform in the end.
But perhaps another nod to the earlier Broadway productions would’ve added to the power of this production.
In 1966, Hal Prince made his set designer create a large mirror that hung above the stage, tilted towards the audience. According to the New York Public Library:
“From the beginning, the audience was meant to be implicated in the moral conflict of cast members like Sally Bowles and Frau Schneider who decide, in the face of authoritarian regimes that do not immediately oppress them, to take the path of self-preservation rather than risk fighting an unwinnable battle against much stronger societal forces.”
What role does each of us play in speaking out against oppression and taking a stand?
What thought-provoking theatre and writing about it. I prefer theatre that causes me to reflect and think. I wish I were able to attend these shows. More, to have discussions after. Perhaps that's what your writing will provide in the community.