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august 4 . 2000 * J u t
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Uarcclle X V Productions p r e s e n t «
the 19th atinuai
L a fem m e ‘M agnijique
International TM
‘Pageant
7W*
a pageant to croum
the most glamorous
impersonator
in the zooM
Sunday;
3, 2000
Ticket info:
(503] 222-5338
www.darcellexv.citysearch.com
Portion o f ticket sales donated to Audria M . Edw ards Scholarship Fun d
n the spring o f 1934, English writer Christo
pher Isherwood spent most of his days in the
garden of a Canary Islands pensione chroni
cling the time he spent in Berlin, much to
the derision of the owner, who urged the young
man to go swimming instead. “After all,” the
proprietor said, “will it matter a hundred years
from now if you wrote that yam or not?”
The answer is, most emphatically, yes.
The Tony Award-winning Broadway revival
of the musical C abaret comes to Portland Aug.
15-20, but this version might not be what you’re
expecting. W hen you think of C abaret, you
might fondly recall the stylish Bob Fosse film
before mentally filing the memory away in the
Liza/Barbra/Judy file, the one marked For Music
Theater Queens Only. But Cabaret boasts an
impressive literary legacy, as well, and it occupies
an important place in gay cultural history.
While the sexuality of the narrator in Isher-
wixxl’s G oodbye to Berlin is left ambiguous, the
1939 novel’s success paved the way for his
more daring gay-themed works, including the
classic A Single M an. But his alter ego is almost
incidental to the story that inspired C abaret.
“I am a camera, with its shutter open, pas
sive, recording, not thinking,” Isherwood
writes. For gay audiences, the character who
matters most is his most enduring creation,
Sally Bowles.
With her green nail polish and loose
morals, she remains a symbol of defiance of
bourgeois convention. In the penultimate
scene in John Van Druten’s 1951 theatrical
adaptation, / Am a Camera, Sally’s mother
comes to fetch her back to England.
Isherwood describes Julie Harris’ perfor
mance in the role: “In a token of her humilia
tion, she wore a frumpy expensive British coat,
which her mother had made her put on. She
looked as miserable as Joan of Arc must have
looked when she was forced to stop dressing as
a man. Then, in the last scene, Julie entered in
the costume she had worn throughout the most
of the play— a black silk sheath with a black
tarn o’shanter and a flame-colored scarf: the
uniform of her revolt. Seeing it, one knew,
before she spoke, that her mother had retired
routed from the battlefield. The effect was
heroic. Bohemia had triumphed.”
When it came time to turn the play into a
musical, composing team John Kander and Fred
Ebb wrote the music with their friend Liza Min
nelli in mind, but because Sally is described in
the novel as singing badly, director Hal Prince
rejected her on the grounds that she sang too
well. One listen to the marginal vocal stylings
°f Jill Hayworth on the original cast album
quickly dispels the wisdom of that decision.
To Isherwood's utter dismay, the stage musi
cal also made the dubious historical suggestion
I
that the moral decadence of Weimar Germany
contributed to the rise of Nazism rather than
standing in defiance of it. Moreover, the lead
ing man was transformed into an overtly het
erosexual American. These changes, however,
allowed the middle-class Broadway audience of
1966 to revel in the onstage debauchery while
simultaneously condemning it.
Fosse’s 1972 smash version of the musical,
on the other hand, earned its place in the gay
history books simply by being one of the first
positive depictions of homosexuality in film. In
this version, the protagonist is a bisexual Eng
lishman played by Michael York, whose wide
face and boyish smile make him a dead ringer
for the young Isherwood. Sally’s offhand accep
tance of this character’s sexuality endeared the
film to gay audiences. Tales o f the City author
Armistead Maupin called Cabaret the first
movie that “really celebrated homosexuality,”
and its depiction of the wild excesses of
Weimar Germany reminded him of his life in
San Francisco.
By assuming the role of Sally in the film,
Minnelli also assumed the mantle of gay icon
long held by her mother, Judy Garland. But
whereas Garland’s public persona— the tor
mented outsider longing to fly over the rain
bow— resonated with the pre-Stonewall genera
tion of gay men, Minnelli’s Sally spoke for the
emerging gay sexual liberation. When Minnelli
makes reference in the title sting to her alcohol-
and pill-addicted friend Elsie as being “the
happiest corpse I’d ever seen,” the subtext of
Garland, dead just three years of an overdose, is
clear. Now clean and sober herself, Minnelli has
gone on to make the song a declaration of
triumph over adversity (rather than conven
tion) by changing the line "When I go, I’m
going like Elsie" to “When I go, I’m NOT going
like Elsie."
C abaret’s newest incarnation is directed by
Sam Mendes, who won an Oscar for the film
American Beauty, another gay-themed story
about defying convention. In an attempt to
recapture the shock that earlier versions had
for theatergoers, this production promises to be
darker, raunchier and more disturbing than its
predecessors. But to find out whether the pro
duction is true to the story’s gay roots, you sim
ply will have to “come to the cabaret.”
• pageant 8 pm
$25 • tables of ten available
Brand Ballroom • Double Tree Hotel-Jantzen Beach
909 North Hayden Island Drive
Portland, Oregon 97209 • Fax [503] 248-6771
*
Christy will perform in Portland
at the Old World Brewery
on August 12
and at St. John’s Pub
on August 13,
opening for the Roches.
LOUNGE
Out of Nowhere can easily be purchased online through CDbaby.com
■ C abaret plays Aug. 15-20 at Keller (former
ly Civic) Auditorium, 222 S.W. Clay St. Tick
ets start at $20 from the box office, (503) 241 -
1802, or Ticketmaster.
M arc A cito is the creator o f the comic strip
“The Boys Next D oor.” Much to his mother's
delight, he played all the leads in his high school
musicals.
*