Life Is a Cabaret: A Three-Way Chat on What Musicals Teach Us About Money

ESTER: Hallo!

NICOLE: Happy Friday!

MEGHAN: I am very excited to be here. Hello!

NICOLE: So Cabaret! I watched the movie for the first time last night, at Ester’s recommendation.

ESTER: Is there a quick explanation for how/why you’ve gone so long without seeing it, being that you are a theater nerd? Were you uninterested for some reason?

MEGHAN: Some confusing reason?

NICOLE: The short version is that I knew some of the music and had never been compelled to sit down with the movie. The interesting part is that when I did watch the movie, I thought “oh, I get why I didn’t want to watch this, Sally Bowles is appalling.”

ESTER: She is! But then, she’s kind of supposed to be, right? Not exactly an aspirational figure.

MEGHAN: Appalling is a VERY strong word. She’s just a gal trying to find her way in the world!

NICOLE: She’s complex, and as portrayed by Liza Minnelli, very watchable. But she also feels like a person whom I would want to stay very far away from.

ESTER: I would like to hear more defenses of Sally Bowles from Meghan, please. 🙂

MEGHAN: How much time do we have? It’s important for me to separate my embryonic desire to someday play Sally on Broadway from my distant, logical examination of her character, but I do feel strongly that she is a product of a very specific time, first, and second, that she lives in a full-hearted way I can’t help but admire, even if it means she winds up in a sticky situation or seven.

NICOLE: It’s full-hearted but it’s also cavalier and thoughtless in a way that I think partially has to do with Sally’s nature and partially has to do with her financial instability. You grab at whatever you think is going to pull you out of that.

ESTER: Or whomever. That’s my biggest issue with her, I think: I admire that she’s gutsy and a survivor and everything, but I recoil from her readiness to use people, especially weak-willed American closet-cases.

MEGHAN: CLIIIIIIIIFFFFFFFFFF.

ESTER: He belongs in a hall-of-fame with Paul, that great Capote creation from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

MEGHAN: To be fair, though, what were her other options? What options did any woman have in 1930s Germany? It’s not like Sally could have taken her gumption and found an i-banking gig.

NICOLE: Meghan, that’s exactly right. She can be a wife-and-mother, she can be a landlady, she can be a poor tutor (maybe), or she can be a FAMOUS ACTRESS. Go for broke, pun intended.

ESTER: But … she’s not talented.

MEGHAN: DISPUTE. I dispute.

ESTER: There is scholarship on this! The character is not supposed to be FAMOUS ACTRESS material.

MEGHAN: I know, but isn’t talent 90 percent perspiration? Did I just make that up? And 10 percent taking advantage of lecherous dudes?

ESTER: I think the quote is success is 90 percent perspiration. But to broaden our focus from Sally for a moment, the whole great, dark, even cynical show is about money, isn’t it? And how people cope with a decreasing, even dangerous, lack of good options?

NICOLE: There’s a reason why the Nazi party tells people that tomorrow will belong to them, if they just sign up.

ESTER: And Nazism, as an ideology, rose out of economic deprivation and the sense of hopelessness and anger that came with it. In 1930s Berlin, everyone was scrambling, not just Sally.

MEGHAN: It’s true: no character gets away unscathed; everyone makes decisions and sacrifices they likely wouldn’t have made under different circumstances.

NICOLE: It makes you wonder why Sally and Cliff-slash-Brian don’t just leave. Is that clarified in the stage version? Not that heading back to London or wherever would have been that much better, in the long run. America, maybe. BTW I know that there are huge financial and logistical reasons why people don’t move (moving costs money, for starters) but it’s interesting that neither Sally nor The Guy are native Berliners. They don’t fit in and they aren’t making a success of their lives, so why do they stay?

ESTER: Inertia? It’s so much easier to stay than to go. Also Weimar Berlin was the epicenter of everything bohemian and exciting. People assumed the Nazis would flame out and the good times would keep rolling.

NICOLE: And the film director could walk into the Kit Kat Club any day now. Plus when you’ve got a job, it’s easy to stay with that job. Okay, that was a bit of a foolish question on my part.

MEGHAN: I wonder how Isherwood felt about the adaptation. He did leave Berlin, but what always struck me about Cabaret is how they basically just throw a shroud over the whole ordeal at the end. It’s incredibly bleak, although truthful.

ESTER: Yeah, and Chicago kind of is too. I tend to think of the two shows together: they’re set in similar time periods and are both about strivers and schemers in show business who have more nerve than skill. And yet both are super popular and enduring. Theater audiences really do have a dark side, huh? Sidenote: apparently Judi Dench once played Sally.

NICOLE: The ending felt realistic to me: of course Sally would choose to get an abortion, and of course she wouldn’t ask or tell The Guy about it until afterwards, and of course (because she’s Sally) she’d expect that she could talk her way out of any fallout from her decision.

Also I would love to see Judi Dench’s performance. (Oh hey, YouTube.)

MEGHAN: Both Chicago and Cabaret are like, “Women Without Agency Make Questionable Choices With Which I Sympathize Greatly Given The Historical Circumstances” shows.

ESTER: Meghan, you’re such a softy. 🙂

NICOLE: I want to talk about one part of the movie that really stuck with me: the two scenes where Sally hangs out with Natalia. Natalia, who is rich, looks well-put-together; Sally shows up in an “I clearly thrifted this and I’m going for STATEMENT over STYLE” outfit and immediately begins eating all of the food.

And I was all “that was me, when I was 25.” Trying to look good by looking bold, since I knew I looked cheap — and of course eating anything I was offered, because that would save me money later on.

ESTER: Aha, so you identify with our anti-hero after all.

NICOLE: More than I want to, yes. It was hard to watch.

MEGHAN: Does she paint her fingernails green in the movie as well?

NICOLE: Oh yes. “Shocking!”

MEGHAN: I love that. And yes, I think that is one of her more sympathetic characteristics — just how hard she’s trying with what little she has. It’s something we can all identify with, I think. I once ate free cheese straws in a broom closet at an event because I didn’t want to spend money on dinner. I recognize this isn’t the same thing as persecution in Nazi-era Germany, but you get the idea.

ESTER: She is definitely trying, it’s true. She’s working hard. But I have a deeply embedded preference for people who make it look effortless — like, again, Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, who also fits this paradigm of “women without agency make questionable choices.” Maybe that’s classist of me, or something? Or maybe I just find Holly more charming and Sally more grating?

MEGHAN: I do not understand this universe of yours. Holly over Sally?!

NICOLE: It’s in the names: Holly treads lightly; Sally plumbs the bowels. Theater people are secret geniuses, after all.

ESTER: I literally just snorted out loud. SOL. Where do you come down, Nicole: Sally or Holly? Or Roxie/Velma?

NICOLE: I mean, Roxie’s all heart. (Rimshot. Or gunshot.) But I don’t know. I identify with each of them in a way I’d like to avoid, honestly. And I don’t think any one is better than the others.

ESTER: Well, some of them are actual murderers … I mean, there’s being scrappy and then there’s killing dudes with guns, right? We are allowed to draw some lines?

NICOLE: LOL I thought you meant, like, their souls or whatever, not the actual actions they take in their stories. If we go by actions, Roxie is by far the worst. WITH THE MURDERING AND EVERYTHING.

ESTER: Are you going to defend Roxie too, Meghan, you hopeless romantic?

MEGHAN: “I bet you you would have done the same!”

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