Cabaret

From Isherwood's Berlin to the Broadhurst

Cabaret began as a book about a city coming apart. Christopher Isherwood's 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin drew on his years in the Weimar capital, and the playwright John Van Druten turned its Sally Bowles material into the 1951 play I Am a Camera. The producer and director Harold Prince acquired the rights and commissioned a musical from the composer John Kander, the lyricist Fred Ebb and the book writer Joe Masteroff.

The result opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre on 20 November 1966, with Ron Field's choreography, Joel Grey as the Emcee and Jill Haworth as Sally. It ran for 1,166 performances and won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Original Score. The premise was a shock for its time: a boarding-house love story and a doomed engagement between a landlady and a Jewish fruit seller, framed by numbers at a seedy nightclub whose master of ceremonies watches the Nazis arrive with a grin.

A musical that keeps being rewritten

Few musicals of the period have been so thoroughly reworked by their revivals. Bob Fosse's 1972 film won multiple Academy Awards and introduced songs, among them Maybe This Time, that later migrated into stage versions. A 1987 Broadway revival gave Grey star billing opposite Alyson Reed as Sally and managed 261 performances.

The decisive change came in London. In 1993 Sam Mendes staged Cabaret at the Donmar Warehouse with Jane Horrocks as Sally and Alan Cumming as an Emcee played as openly and dangerously sexual, a reading that has shaped the role ever since. That production transferred to Broadway in 1998 with Cumming and Natasha Richardson, took four Tony Awards including Best Revival of a Musical, and ran for 2,377 performances, one of the longest runs in Broadway history. Cumming returned to the role in 2014 opposite Michelle Williams, Emma Stone and Sienna Miller, who rotated as Sally.

Frecknall builds a club inside a theatre

Rebecca Frecknall's production, titled Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, opened at the Playhouse Theatre in November 2021 with Eddie Redmayne as the Emcee and Jessie Buckley as Sally. The designer Tom Scutt gutted the Playhouse and rebuilt it as the club itself, with in-the-round seating, two-person tables and a gold-draped pre-show space threaded through reimagined backstage corridors. Julia Cheng choreographs and Ben van Tienen is the musical director.

Time Out's theatre editor Andrzej Lukowski gave it four stars, calling Buckley a roaring force of nature whose deliberately off-key singing was nonetheless astonishing, and praising Omari Douglas's vulnerable Clifford Bradshaw. He was cooler on Redmayne, questioning whether so much physical elaboration served what is essentially a supporting part, but singled out Scutt's redesign, costumes and lighting. The production led the 2022 Olivier nominations with eleven and won seven, including Best Musical Revival, a record haul at that ceremony. Critics' Circle and Evening Standard Theatre Awards followed.

The staging crossed the Atlantic in 2024. A rebuilt Kit Kat Club opened at Broadway's August Wilson Theatre on 21 April that year, with Redmayne reprising the Emcee and Gayle Rankin as Sally. It closed on 21 September 2025 after 592 performances, having won one Tony Award, for scenic design.

Where it stands in September 2026

The London run has outlasted every previous Cabaret in the West End. Theatre Weekly reported in April 2026 that the production had passed 1,800 performances; by August, WhatsOnStage put the figure above 1,900. Booking is open through to 18 September 2027, and a celebratory performance is planned for 20 November 2026 to mark both the sixtieth anniversary of the musical's Broadway premiere and the fifth of this staging.

The show's engine is a rolling cast. Jamie Muscato and Joy Woods took over as the Emcee and Sally on 25 May 2026. Woods gave her final performance on 5 September, with Marina Tavolieri covering Sally from 7 to 19 September, and Muscato plays his last on 19 September. From 21 September 2026 Skylar Astin, known from Pitch Perfect and Spring Awakening on Broadway, and Sarah Hyland of Modern Family and Broadway's The Great Gatsby make their West End debuts in the two roles. Astin is booked until 12 December 2026 and Hyland until 23 January 2027. Ronan Burns joins as Ernst Ludwig and Lindsay Atherton as Fraulein Kost, while Ruthie Henshall as Fraulein Schneider, Robert Hands as Herr Schultz and Baker Mukasa as Clifford Bradshaw continue.

The musical is also being staged elsewhere without Frecknall's name attached. Auckland Theatre Company and Auckland Live have a production at the ASB Waterfront Theatre directed by Benjamin Kilby-Henson, with Nomi Cohen as Sally and Matu Ngaropo as the Emcee, which was extended to 25 October 2026 according to a report published on 1 September.

What a night at the Kit Kat Club is like

The evening runs to roughly two hours and forty-five minutes including an interval, but the official advice is to treat the doors as the start. The venue opens 75 minutes before curtain and the Prologue company of dancers and musicians works the bars and corridors; a reviewer in June 2026 described being handed a shot of schnapps on arrival and finding performers positioned throughout the building. Performances are Monday to Saturday at 7.30pm with 2pm matinees on Wednesday and Saturday, and from 22 September Tuesday evenings move to 7pm. Time Out lists ticket prices from £30 to £390, and seat upgrades from the dress circle to stalls tables are sold on the night.

Reviews of the 2026 company have been warm. Magenta Adventures found Muscato's Emcee magnetic yet unsettling, shifting between humour and menace and engaging unpredictably with whoever was nearest, and credited Woods with undeniable charisma and a Sally whose vulnerability shows beneath the glamour. Henshall's Schneider was praised for warmth, humour and delicate vocals. The same reviewer noted what has become the production's signature: a journey from spectacle to something far more disquieting, as the club's freedom gives way, scene by scene, to conformity. Performers enter and exit through the audience aisles, so the tables closest to the stage are part of the action rather than spectators to it.