Life’s a cabaret for Will

CABARET, Lowry, Salford
WILL Young keeps plugging away in theatre and at last he seems to have found his ideal role.

As the Emcee in Kander and Ebb’s “Cabaret” he sports a German accent, a guttural singing voice, a white face, lascivious manners and — at one point at least — nothing at all...

But the scene is far from sexy: at the time he and the other degenerates in Thirties Berlin have been rounded up, and their nakedness is because they are en route the gas chamber.

It’s a stark, but in Rufus Norris’s rather heavily-handed production, obvious reminder that this cold-hearted musical is not The Sound of Music with extra Nazi, but the point at which the music stopped and Europe’s young were made to grow up fast.

The show toured four years ago with Wayne Sleep in Young’s place and TV newcomer Samantha Barks as Sally Bowles (though with the same, highly-effective Henry Luxemburg as Cliff, the newly-arrived, would-be novelist whose presence kicks the story to life).

Back then neither Barks nor Sleep got much of a handle on their roles, and the same is true here.

Will Young is certainly in the right ballpark but is too often allowed to play for laughs a character whose laughter is mocking and sardonic, not cheerful.

Bowles is played by former EastEnder Michelle Ryan, whose sexiness is buried under fairly ordinary acting skills and indifferent singing ability. She didn’t convince me much at all, overplaying her character’s dreadfully-decadent pose and hardly capturing Bowles’ inner vulnerability. She’s acting it, not living it.

The honours of the evening actually go to two supporting characters — played by veterans Sian Phillips and Linal Haft. As landlady Schneider, Phillips performs two often omitted numbers beautifully, and forms a touching partnership with Haft’s Jewish fruiterer, who thinks all this Nazi stuff will blow over...