By David Feldman
Contributing writer

If you go to the theater open to those moments that only live performance can bring — the ones that thrill or terrify or enthrall or delight you deep into your very heart and soul and guts — you’ll find plenty of them in the Syracuse University Drama Department’s production of Cabaret, currently running at the Archbold Theater.  

Yes, the Archbold, and not the department’s usual venue, the Storch.  

This is the first time an all-student production has gone up in the house that Arthur Storch built.  As the department’s productions have often played to packed houses, I’d bet the move to the larger venue was intended not only to give the students a chance to work in a more conventional space, but also to double audience capacity.  If the nearly sold-out house the night I went is any indication, the strategy has succeeded. 

The move next door does mean that much of the smaller space’s intimacy is lost ― despite Director David Wanstreet’s placing some of the tables from the Kit Kat Klub down on the audience level in a vain attempt to bridge the gap between spectator and stage.  But Wanstreet fills the large stage with a vibrant, erotic and visually compelling spectacle that showcases some enormously talented students.  

There are a few moments when the air comes out of the production, but it’s heart-stopping at times: There’s not a bad voice or a weak dancer in the cast. Wanstreet’s choreography moves his students energetically up, down, over and around Alex Koziara’s two-level set; and the orchestra ― vibrantly conducted by Brian Cimmet ― will knock your socks off.

As if all this weren’t enough, at the very center of this production, holding it up when it starts to sag and capturing your attention every moment he’s on stage, is Chris Dwan as the Emcee ― a part which once seemed to belong only to Joel Gray, but which Dwan has made his own personal creation.  Dwan’s performance, with Hitler-ish haircut, funkily syncopated movements, viciously expressive eyes and erotically ambiguous smile (not to mention a voice that’s ideal for the role) belies the fact that this talented and skilled performer is a mere college senior.

The John Kander and Fred Ebb musical is a sweetly-sad celebration of pre-Hitler era Berlin angst, with more than a few overtones of Brecht.  This version stresses the bisexuality of the young American would-be writer (Kenny Metzger as a somewhat distanced Cliff Bradshaw) who comes to Berlin to find material for a novel only to fall for the Kit Kat Klub’s gin-besotted, promiscuous, yet still somehow innocent Sally Bowles (Hannah Corneau, with a fine voice but a performance that nevertheless comes up a little short of being fully convincing).  I found myself wishing that the introduction of Cliff’s homosexual back story didn’t just wander off into irresolution, and I wish there were more genuine sparks in the twin romances — young Sally and Cliff, and older Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz. 

Alanna Rogers and Ross Baum are touching as the landlady and her Jewish grocer suitor whose mature-years romance is split asunder by her prescient fear that the future holds no hope for a gentile-Jewish bond.  

Eric Meyers as Ernst moves easily from what appears to be a simple smuggler trying to earn a slightly illegal living early on, to a vicious demagogic follower of Hitler who brings an end to whatever innocence there might have been in the Kit Kat Klub ― reminding us (as if in 2010 we ever needed reminding) that politics, prejudice and xenophobia inevitably force themselves upon those seeking sanctuary in Kit Kat Klubs of the world.  And Mary Kate Morrissey is a charm as the tart who can’t refuse a sailor or his money until she becomes, quite convincingly, a somewhat less than charming convert to Fascism.

The coming of the Nazi storm is presented in one of those powerful moments that lift this production, as the Emcee comes downstage, solo, with a period phonograph that plays an eerily tinkly version of  Kander and Ebb’s touching and ironic Tomorrow Belongs to Me, about the inevitable dominance of the "Master Race."  It’s a scene that foreshadows the production’s chilling last moments, powerfully staged by Wanstreet, that steps outside the script (and history) to foreshadow the ghastly events that will take place only a few years later as Jews and gays move into a future of stark shadows and SS guards, moving off from the rear of the stage into what we know will become the Holocaust.

And special kudos for another moment, when Marc Fisher’s lighting brings us with a start into the show’s opening with a narrow spot shining on the peephole of the door into the cabaret ― or maybe into our own souls, because staring back at us at the end of a drum-roll are Emcee Chris Dawn’s flashing and delighted (but somehow world-weary) eyes.  

The production’s power is diminished occasionally by overly cartoonish moments, and more affected crotch-rubbing and tit-grabbing than even the most dissolute habitués of one of Berlin’s most dissolute cabarets might have found erotic. 

This is not your father’s or mother’s Cabaret, much of the sweet and sad tenderness of earlier versions having been cast aside in favor of near-pornographic action and bold sexuality. But the performances and staging are stunning often enough that your heart, soul and guts will know they have had some of those genuinely powerful moments we go to the theater for.

David Feldman is Professor Emeritus of English and Journalism and former director of the journalism program at Onondaga Community College, and has taught drama at Syracuse University.  He won four Syracuse Press Club awards, including the first ever given by the organization for criticism.  His plays have been produced in New York City, Los Angeles, the Boston area, Ithaca, Syracuse and Rochester.

DETAILS
What: Cabaret, performed by the Syracuse University Drama Department.
Where: Archbold Theatre (Syracuse Stage), 820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse.
When: through Oct. 10
Length of Performance: 2 hours 30 minutes, including a 15-minute intermission.
Tickets: $16 to $20. Call 315-443-3275 or http://vpa.syr.edu/drama 
Family guide: Recommended for audiences of middle school age and up