Cabaret is the Kander and Ebb musical set in the decadent Kit Kat Klub of late-Weimar-era Berlin, where the seductive, morally ambiguous Emcee presides over a nightly parade of song and spectacle even as the Nazi party's shadow lengthens over the city. At its heart is Sally Bowles, the club's magnetic and self-destructive English cabaret singer, whose romance with the visiting American writer Clifford Bradshaw plays out against a backdrop of mounting political menace that most of the characters try determinedly to ignore. A parallel, quieter romance between a Jewish fruit vendor and a German boardinghouse landlady is slowly poisoned by rising antisemitism, giving the show its most devastating emotional gut-punch. The musical's numbers, from the sardonic title song to "Willkommen," juxtapose glittering entertainment with encroaching horror, using the cabaret stage as a mirror for a society dancing its way toward catastrophe. Its unflinching look at complicity, denial, and the seduction of escapism has made it one of the most acclaimed and frequently revived musicals of the twentieth century.

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