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I chose to see the show Cabaret and ended up being quite entertained throughout the entire play. I did not know anything about this production, and I think I enjoyed it more for that reason. The first thing I will discuss in this paper is the plot. This play shows us the lives of many different people during the period right before the First World War. The play is set in Berlin, a place full of activity and talk of the Germans and the Jews. The cabaret is a place where people can go in order to forget the worries of the world.
Here they can separate themselves from the uproar and the hate that is beginning to surround them in this city. The plot includes the lives and feelings of certain characters in order to portray to the audience the variety of opinions people from different backgrounds possessed during this era. During the play we become familiar with each character and begin to understand their situations. We see the artistic truth in this play as we watch the characters react to their surroundings. One example of this is when Herr Schultz gets engaged to Fraulein Schneider. At first they are both so happy and in love; they are ready to spend the remainder of their lives together.
At their engagement party, Ernst Ludwig tells Fraulein Schneider that her soon-to-be husband is Jewish. Ernst explains how this will affect Fraulein Schneider when the Nazis take over Berlin. Rather than follow her heart, Fraulein Schneider lets society get the best of her and she calls off the wedding with Schultz. This shows the audience what a huge impact the Germans were starting to have on the rest of the world. Soon these people would loose much of their freedom. The cabaret gave them a chance to ignore all the terrible things that were about to happen in their country.
The cabaret had no rules and no prejudice. The genre of this play is a little confusing. It seems to have more than one genre because there is a lot of humor, but there are also some serious ethical situations. Cabaret is definitely a comedy. Many different parts of this play sent the audience into fits of laughter. There is a bisexual emcee, and a group of provocative female characters that engage themselves in very risqu activities.
Society is constantly mocked in Cabaret and the flaws of humanity are blatantly ridiculed during many of the scenes. There were some characteristics of this play that made me think it was a tragedy. There were a few parts of the play that seemed very sad. These scenes occurred in the second half of the play and left the audience wondering what would become of the characters they had just met. One upsetting part, which made me consider the genre to be tragic, was when Sally Bowles and her boyfriend, Cliff Bradshaw, get into a big fight.
After she becomes pregnant she leaves him to go back to the cabaret, thinking she will be better off there. She is too scared to stay with Cliff because she fears the reality of the outside world. If she goes to the cabaret then she can ignore her problems and pretend that nothing is wrong with her life. The tragic part is that when Cliff finally finds Sally, she has already aborted the baby.
She decides she will not go to America with him. It is obvious that if Sally leaves Berlin she will be better off. The war is coming soon and she may not be safe if she stays. It is very sad to see all of these people pretend that life is fabulous when really the world around them is about to erupt.
The character that I found to be the most intriguing was named Sally Bowles. She is a very odd person and seems extremely nave when it comes to the serious parts of her life. She meets Cliff Bradshaw and likes the idea of him because he is a good guy. When she is with him they have a lot of fun because she does not feel guilty about the things she does. He is very good for her and eventually gets her away from the trouble of the cabaret. After she gets pregnant and they decide to keep the baby, she starts to get a little nervous.
I think she is terrified of normality. She lives for the craziness of the cabaret. Sally needs to have the cabaret as an outlet for all those things that haunt her mind: war, sex, drugs, and loneliness. Cliff tries to get her to leave Berlin with him.
It is this idea that makes Sally realize how close the war is. If she leaves Berlin then she is facing her problems and that is something she has never done before. Sally decides not to leave with Cliff. The idea that the cabaret is a place without troubles is embedded in her mind. She will stay there and forget about the war and the hate. She will not go out into the real world, because it is a place much easier to escape than to face.
Cabaret is a play that keeps the attention of the audience. It is entertaining because it is funny and serious at the same time. It makes fun of issues that many people are afraid to discuss. I was satisfied by this play because at the end of the show I felt as if I knew each character. I cared about their lives and what would happen to them in the future.
This means that the actors did their jobs. I think it is important for plays to touch on events that occurred in world history. A play can teach its audience a number of things and that is exactly what Cabaret did for me. It taught me about the situations people faced at the beginning of WWI and the ways in which they dealt with the coming of a seriously tragic war.
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