Cabaret Dreams – This Time
A retrospective on Natasha Richardson’s Sally Bowles
Marcos Namit
In November 2014, I purchased tickets for the Cabaret revival, starring film star Emma Stone, and Tony Award winning actor Alan Cumming reprising his 1998 performance. Cabaret first opened on Broadway in 1966, with a legendary score written by John Kander and Fred Ebb; and found itself etched into eternal pop culture through the iconic 1972 film, directed by Bob Fosse and starring the indomitable Liza Minnelli as madcap singer, Sally Bowles. Cabaret is a work of art that has influenced and stayed with me since I first saw it in 1998. My boyfriend and I were excited and were filled with anticipation.
I had a reason for seeing Cabaret again 16 years later: There was the desire to revisit a show that was starring another actress, and I was intrigued by Ms. Stone might approach playing Sally Bowles. Also to see someone else have a stab at replacing Natasha Richardson’s nuanced and devastating take on the role—for which she also won the 1998 Best Actress Tony Award, proved irresistible.
I was 16 when I first saw Cabaret at The Henry Miller Theater. At that point in my life, I was a teen struggling with two main issues: My sexuality, for I was constantly being bullied for being openly gay in high school; and in 1991, my Mother had passed away with complications from Lupus. I was a gay Filipino being raised by a very strict Grandmother and a loving, but absent father.
I often turned to movie musicals and old movies for comfort, because my Mother probably had introduced me to old Hollywood, and she herself had loved them so much. Frequent viewings of The King and I, My Fair Lady and Cabaret with Liza Minnelli were always on rotation. I sang along to all these movies, and had hoped one day to be an actor: a musical theater star.
One thing that I had always been self-aware about myself was that I couldn’t ever get my voice to sound perfect: to have that incredible and nuanced sound. I could sing, but it never came out sounding the way I imagined. This was a painful realization for me. Somehow acting or singing would not be the profession for me; but subconsciously, I longed for an idol who could show me how could I “pull it off”?
Enter the ghost of Natasha Richardson.
As a kid who first heard her sing, I was shocked at the rawness of Ms. Richardson’s voice. It wasn’t beautiful, it wasn’t perfect. My aunts and I sat at a front table close to the stage. When I experienced Ms. Richardson’s Sally, I could feel everything she felt about the world. Sally was struggling to fit in a seedy dive, a suburban middle-class girl who also didn’t fit in with the norm. She was a drug addict who was seeking solace at a seedy nightclub to ease the traumas and boredom of middle-class existence. Sally was also trying to find love in all the wrong places. Now at 33, I completely understand that is what Sally must have felt, what might have motivated her to come to Berlin and wind up at the Kit Kat Club.
Looking back, I realized that Ms. Richardson herself was playing this iconic role in an attempt to shed the Redgrave pedigree and to make a name for herself as an actress. I remember reading interviews at the time that Ms. Richardson was anxious of the comparisons that theatergoers might make about her and Liza Minnelli.
According to an article from The New York Times, she was aware that the theatrical community was extremely critical and unforgiving of its performers if they tried to deviate from the iconic.[1]
But as that lonely 16 year old kid, I was completely hooked for Ms. Richardson’s much needier and more human take on Sally Bowles.
I recall Natasha Richardson wearing a short white dress, trimmed with faux fur when she sang the torch song “Maybe This Time”. She quivered as she held the microphone, and sang with a little-girl sweetness and pout as she opened the lines “Maybe This Time/I’ll Be Lucky/Maybe This Time/He’ll Stay”. With her eyes looking up at the dim lights above, her husky voice lowered itself into a melancholy and depressive state. Sally’s pain was self-inflicted and masochistic. This damning glimpse of self-awareness made me want to save the character, and the self-destruction she projected.
I discerned that what Sally has wanted all her life is for someone to love her and make her feel safe and wanted. This was no longer Natasha Richardson or Liza Minnelli. It was a full-fledged human being, created out of genius and despair: an actress who completely inhabited the character on stage.
I understood why Sally often played the ditz and why she often slept with all the wrong men. This was a moment when art and real life began to blur inside my head.
Once the show reached its tragic finale, my heart sank. I did not want to leave the theater. The image of Ms. Richardson in a stark black background, wearing the barest of little white dresses has haunted me ever since. When Ms. Richardson came out at the curtain call, the applause for her was thunderous. As she gazed at the audience, she looked as if she would flutter away from all the noise. Somehow, I wanted to relive this moment, and I found it 16 years later with success.
We now circle back to 2014, watching Cabaret once more. This time, it is Emma Stone singing “Maybe This Time.” I hold my boyfriend’s hand and close my eyes. I imagine myself at 16, gazing at the stage. Ms. Stone is wearing the same little white dress that Ms. Richardson had worn back in 1998. For anyone to pass the Sally Bowles test, “Maybe This Time” is the number to judge whether the actress playing Sally “gets it”: It is the one number that should make me feel and believe everything Sally is feeling: Hope, rage, and so much love going into a slow burn of a torch song ready to take flight. I feel tears come out of my eyes. I know Emma Stone is different. Liza Minnelli is different as well. But I know that through this song, Emma Stone succeeds in giving it back to the production’s originator well enough that I withhold all my applause until the very end.
[1] ”I’ve had my moments, believe me, when I’ve thought there will be all those New York theater folk out there saying, ‘Oh, she’s not Liza,’ ” Ms. Richardson said. “A Cooler, More Self Aware Sally Bowles”. Theater Article” The New York Times, 15 March 1998.
About the Author
Marcos Namit (He/Him) earned his MA at The Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. He has worked as an educator in both South Florida and New York. He advocates for his students and believes that the key to an educational foundation is through reading and writing. He lives with his husband and two cats.
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