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Drumroll, introducing the ‘Toast of Mayfair’: Miss Fraulein Sally Bowles. The eccentric Chelsea girl who escapes to Weimar-era Berlin to moonlight at the Kit Kat Club has a new face: Cara Delevingne’s. A coup for sure, among the most famous models in the world – and it’s a helluva part. Meaty, complicated, entertaining. But: can Delevingne act; can she sing? We didn’t know.
To confirm: she’s out of the park superb. Delevingne’s husky, upper class growl and distinctive weirdness make her a legitimate and believable Bowles; a character oscillating between high-drama and high-morose. With her patchwork of tattoos and super-human limbyness, Delevingne is right at home among the fantastical crew of glamorous misfits and weirdos at the Kit Kat Club. Her voice, while not as powerful as born and bred stage actor Amy Lennox (a former Sally given the show’s rotating cast), was eerie, solid and excellent – with all the performative barks and whispers that make the best of the role. Delevingne’s beauty makes her intensely watchable, but beauty alone won’t grip audiences for three hours. It was her twitchy, nuanced performance which prompted the standing ovation and kept the audience rapt. The final number, Life is a Cabaret – with the tragedy of Nazism taking hold on the county – is goosepimple-inducing. The dark underbelly of the play, with the veneer of shimmery, shiny good times, makes it all the more compelling and sad.
Enter a world of debauchery and glamour as the Playhouse Theatre is transformed into the Kit Kat Club of 1930s Berlin
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Delevingne’s opposite number: Luke Treadaway as a muscled Emcee, is also a sinister delight. He prances and contorts around the stage, teasing and titillating his assembly of scantily clad sidekicks. His I Don’t Care Much, performed in the second act, in a straight suit, make-up gone is brilliant in its harrowing stark blandness. A shout out to Wilf Scolding as Ernst Ludwig who moves from amiable new friend to Nazi evangelist with disturbing panache.
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It was my second Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. I saw it for the first time over two years ago, and it’s still a thunderbolt of an evening. Rebecca Frecknall’s whip smart direction holds strong; Kander and Ebb’s songs are all the better for knowing and Tom Scutt’s costumes are still ravishing. It’s still the hottest ticket on the West End – and Delevingne as Bowles just made it, frankly, roasting. As Emcee says when introducing Bowles for the first time, ‘now don’t you forget to bring her back once you have finished with her.’ That’s hot hot hot we’re talking.
Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club is on now at the Playhouse Theatre. Cara Delevingne will perform as Sally Bowles opposite Luke Treadaway as Emcee until 1 June; kitkat.club.
