{"id":1087,"date":"2021-07-01T13:14:52","date_gmt":"2021-07-01T12:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/?p=1087"},"modified":"2024-04-13T21:19:45","modified_gmt":"2024-04-13T20:19:45","slug":"david-white-on-kanders-cabaret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/?p=1087","title":{"rendered":"David White on Kander\u2019s Cabaret"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

4th<\/sup> March 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David White is a Musical Supervisor\/Musical Director\/Orchestrator. Recent credits include: Fisherman\u2019s Friends The Musical<\/em> (2021 Truro); Cabaret<\/em> (Gothenburg Opera 2020); Groundhog Day <\/em>(Wermland Opera 2020); Man Of La Mancha <\/em>(English National Opera 2019); Something Rotten<\/em> (2018 Karlstad); The Assassination Of Katie Hopkins<\/em> (Theatr Clwyd – Best Musical Production 2018 UK Theatre Awards), Fiddler On The Roof<\/em> (2017 Chichester Festival Theatre); Les Miserables<\/em> (new production Karlstad & J\u00f6nk\u00f6ping); Showboat<\/em>, Crucible, Sheffield and West End (Best Musical Production 2016 UK Theatre Awards) ; Sunset Boulevard<\/em> (Wermland Opera, Gothenburg Opera & English National Opera); Top Hat<\/em> (Malmo Opera); Shrek<\/em>, Crazy For You<\/em>, & Candide<\/em> (Wermland Opera, Sweden).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music for his \u2018contribution to the world of Musical Theatre\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cabaret<\/em> \u2013 one of my all-time favourite musicals. Is it a particular favourite for you, as well?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well\nyes, it\u2019s such a famous score and it\u2019s always fascinated me. I love the\nrichness of the original piece but have never seen a full orchestral version. In\nmy lifetime, the era defining productions were the Donmar Warehouse and the\nBroadway revivals. They were chamber versions set in the Kit Kat Club with\nreduced orchestral forces (six to eight musicians) so it was actually quite\ndivorced from Kander\u2019s original musical intentions. I had an opportunity to do\nit at Gothenburg Opera (it was supposed to open in July 2020) not only in the\nfull glory of the original intentions of the score, but actually in an even\nlarger version than that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gothenburg have a full opera orchestra and they like to use as much of it as possible. So I re-orchestrated the piece for their whole orchestra \u2013 it was amazing! There\u2019s one studio recording with a similar size full symphony orchestra. It\u2019s available on iTunes [National Symphony Orchestra conducted by John Owen Edwards, Cabaret \u2013 Complete Recording of the score (Original Studio Cast) remastered 2006]. When you hear the score in those terms it connects to the operatic, as well as the Vaudeville and all the different genres that are in the writing. The original version in 1966 had an onstage band of four but a large pit orchestra. The contrast in size between the club numbers on stage and the pit orchestra was huge, so that was one of the things that was uppermost in my mind when I got this opportunity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\nfirst lockdown happened I was actually conducting a production of Groundhog Day<\/em> \u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh that\u2019s apt. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(laughs)\nwhich was running in the middle of Sweden. We\u2019d just opened, had given almost two\nweeks of performances when the call for lockdown in the UK happened, and I\nwatched in horror as the number of flights returning back to the UK diminished\nin front of my eyes. I thankfully got myself a seat on a flight home. But then Gothenburg\nOpera decided to go ahead and rehearse in the summer \u2013 they put back opening to\nthe beginning of September. So as a family we all moved to Sweden for the summer\nand worked gloriously in July and August in a socially distanced way. (It was a British creative team,\nwith a wonderful director called James Grieve.) We were allowed to do\nthat with a view to theoretically opening in September when they estimated that\npublic performances would then recommence. But in actual fact it went the opposite\nway. We\u2019d done an internal set of previews and dress rehearsals, thinking that\nany second we were going to get the permission to perform \u2013 but then it was\ndenied. We went through an agonising autumn where we performed something like\nonce a week to keep the show in that oven ready condition. Eventually sometime\nin October\/November the Swedish government said it was not going to happen. So\nthe opera closed and everybody went into furlough. In July and August, I think\nour production was the only one of any kind of live theatre happening anywhere\nin the world. It was like being on an island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So strange. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t realise that a number of people had re-orchestrated it. Have you conducted smaller versions as well? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No,\nthis was the first time I\u2019d conducted Cabaret<\/em>.\nMy experience, probably like yours, had always been mostly listening to\nrecordings or going to performances where it had much, much smaller forces. In\nfact the latter day performances that happened, particularly in the UK, tended\nto get rid of a lot of the songs that weren\u2019t based in the Kit Kat Club and set\nit all in there. I\u2019m not saying that\u2019s not valid, because they\u2019re absolutely\nincredible productions. Some of the performances were defining \u2013 it\u2019s difficult\nto think of the piece without thinking of certain people playing the roles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly enough, Jerome Robbins suggested to Hal Prince that he cut all the numbers and just set it in the club during previews of the original production in early 1966 when they were first trying it out in Washington (before bringing it to New York). But he resisted it. It\u2019s interesting that this is an idea that people would return to later on. James Grieve and I really wanted to reinvestigate the original version because of our venue size. I don\u2019t know if you know Gothenburg Opera as a venue, but it\u2019s one of the largest opera houses in Europe. The stage is something like half of a football pitch \u2013 it\u2019s absolutely massive. When the operachef asked us to consider doing this production, he knew it was an insane thing to ask us to do. Half of the piece is really quite intimate scenes. Is there a large-scale version of Cabaret <\/em>that can also maintain the intimacy of the production? That was our brief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So right from the start we were thinking about how to accommodate these two different worlds. My wife has designed virtually all of James Grieve\u2019s productions, so I found myself working with her. It also meant that right from the beginning James, my wife and I had a year\u2019s worth of bottles of wine and dinners where we were discussing the concept of the production before Day 1 of rehearsals! I think Lucy, my wife, had probably the hardest job \u2013 creating an environment that gave a bigger spectacle than Cabaret<\/em> had ever had before, but while also providing us with the intimate scenes that the show needed. It was a massive challenge, but it was really, really good fun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how big was the cast\/orchestra?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nthink we ended up with a cast of thirty-two including two swings, which was\nquite a large ensemble. There are seven major principals (which is quite a lot)\nand for the Kit Kat Club \u2018girls\u2019 in our production we had a mixture of girls\nand boys (we had around fifteen as opposed to five). We also had a mixed children\u2019s\nchoir for \u2018Tomorrow Belongs to Me\u2019 \u2013 I did a vocal arrangement for a children\u2019s\nchoir because in the 1930s the Nazis quite often used children to raise money\nfor the party. They\u2019d go along to a village square and an angelic group of\nAryan children would sing songs about the fatherland. Nazis would go around\nwith their tins rattling and people would give money. We wanted to recreate\nthat within the stage setting, which was absolutely fantastic. It was so powerful,\nwith about forty people on the stage (the whole cast including the children). I\nkept the onstage band the same size (four players) because I wanted to have\nthis massive contrast between that and forty players in the pit. The original\nonstage band had a piano, sax, trombone and kit \u2013 I didn\u2019t disturb that at all\nbecause I wanted that very rough sounding raucous 1920s jazz that was part of\nthose club numbers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, that Berlin feel.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. We decided to reflect the feel of Berlin in the 1920s by adopting a gender-neutral approach throughout the ensemble. We had boys playing girls parts and vice versa. We were also very lucky with our onstage band. There found one guy and three girls who were all very individual and outgoing. There was also a fantastic, very 1920\/30s Berlin feel to the people in our production \u2013 they were a very political group. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the reasons why I\u2019ve done musicals so often in the opera houses of Sweden is that the opera houses provide their orchestra and facilities, but the creative team and cast are all from Musical Theatre. A few times in the UK we\u2019ve suffered a bit from having a mixture of Operatic and Musical Theatre singers who didn\u2019t have the movements skills of a Broadway dancer\/actor \u2013 and when you mix those worlds it becomes quite tricky to merge them into one whole. So we were spared that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gothenburg Opera is such a fantastic house. They have a great number of really fantastic actor\/singers on contract to the house. Musical Theatre training generally in Sweden is very advanced \u2013 I was totally blown away by the standard, particularly of the singing (as a musician). They have three major Musical Theatre courses in Gothenburg alone, one that specialises in dance and the others that cover all the disciplines together. They have been there for thirty years and the level of teaching is amazing \u2013 that was a delightful surprise. So I\u2019ve been going backwards and forwards to Scandinavia quite a lot. In Sweden I get the chance to conduct large orchestras (which was my training) with great casts of voices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s brilliant. What about the size of the orchestra?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a small symphony orchestra worth of strings (12 violins, 8 violas, 4 cellos and 2 double basses). And then because opera woodwind players don\u2019t double up (unlike Broadway players who sometimes play as many as five or six instruments)[1]<\/a> all of those had to be expanded as in Noah\u2019s Ark: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets and 2 bassoons, quite a large brass section plus percussion and some saxes. I think we had forty players for our in house premiere, it was like a very large studio orchestra and it sounded really magnificent. Kander brought out so many elements of style, and Kurt Weill was such a big influence on Cabaret<\/em>. Fr\u00e4ulein Schneider\u2019s <\/em>numbers \u2018So what?\u2019 and \u2018What would you do?\u2019 could have been written by Kurt Weill (she was played by Weill\u2019s wife Lotte Lenya in the original production) \u2013 they\u2019re so sophisticated in their harmonic language. The orchestrations reflect that operatic nature, but you don\u2019t get that effect if you hear them played by the six-piece cabaret club band. It was a very, very stark contrast hearing those Schneider numbers and then the Kit Kat Club numbers like \u2018Don\u2019t Tell Mama\u2019 which are started off by just four players on stage. So it gave me lots of opportunities to contrast the size of ensembles. I could do a close up with only four players and then suddenly go widescreen and have forty-four at my disposal. It was really good fun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you think it\u2019s much more demanding on the conductor when you have huge contrasts like that?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think with the preparation, yes. In order to cope with that problem I cast the onstage band from players who weren\u2019t employed at Gothenburg Opera. I found these amazing freelance jazz musicians who\u2019d never played there in their lives. They were so excited to suddenly come and play in this amazing posh building! They were such an interesting bunch of crazy people, and they brought with them their own lives and attitudes towards music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They rehearsed mostly completely separately. I wanted to create musical glue between the onstage band and the orchestra so I added a bass that played with the onstage band but from the pit and I also doubled the drum kit occasionally as well. When I moved the sound from being on stage to being in the pit, the bass player remained constant between the two sound sources. To pass from the onstage drum kit to the other in the pit, the one in the pit would just play the kick drum for a while, and when the onstage snare drum stopped the drummer would start playing the snare drum in the pit. You literally did a pan from stage into the pit \u2013 it was like old-fashioned stereo \u2013 it broadened right in front of you and then sucked into the stage when it went back to being intimate again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was hard to do as a conductor with the huge\nstage, there was something like twenty metres between me on the podium and the\nlittle onstage quartet. If we hadn\u2019t used clever modern technology, it would\nhave been very, very challenging because it took about an eighth of a second\nfor the onstage band sound to hit the pit. If everybody played on my beat, we\nwould never have been together, so we had to conquer that in different ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With monitors?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, with TV monitors and audio monitors. The\nonstage band had to develop a different way of reading my beat to the players\nin the pit. It meant the players in the pit had to play on the downbeat and\nquite close to my beat, and the onstage band learned to slightly anticipate\neverything I was doing, which was fascinating. The in-ear monitoring helped\nwith that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I spoke to Gareth Valentine [see Issue 16] he said that in Chicago<\/em> click tracks are used at various points. Was that the case in Cabaret<\/em>? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No it wasn\u2019t, actually. I took that decision\nvery early on because of the varied nature of the music. If it was all jazz we\nwould have probably solved it all with click tracks because you want the music\nin time without any sort of negotiation. But so much of the score is either Operatic\nin nature or classic Broadway style \u2013 those numbers don\u2019t like being tied\ninto a fixed tempo. They need a flexible approach so that it breathes with the\nphrases, breathes with the singers and slows down and speeds up according to\nthe structures of the numbers. Cabaret<\/em>\nsits within so many different styles so it felt like it was going to be too complicated\nto have a twenty-bar section of jazz that was on a click track, then onto\nsomething more flexible, and then back to the click track again etc. It would\nhave been so difficult and fraught with technical problems. All it takes is for\none click track to go wrong and you\u2019re out of sequence \u2013 and you have no\ncommunication with four players who are twenty metres away. There were too many\nthings that could go wrong. So I just thought we should try and use technology as\nlittle as we can. We solved most of the problems without it and only used\ntechnology when we found we couldn\u2019t communicate with enough accuracy with each\nother. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gareth also explained how Chicago <\/em>is completely stage led \u2013 singers would never take cues from him (although they could see him on monitors above the audience).<\/strong> He said he would just have to follow them with dropbeats. Did you have to follow your singers\/dancers in the same way?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was genuinely a mixture of the two. There\nwere large sections of dance music where you literally couldn\u2019t take control as\nconductor, because once the sequence had started it has <\/em>to be led by the action on stage. So sometimes I would have to\ncatch things that happened on stage using dropbeats (to use Gareth\u2019s term) as they\nwere driving all the changes. But then\nwith a lot of the solo numbers that are not<\/em>\ndance related, a more traditional operatic set of rules would come into play. You\nbreathe with the singer and they take cues from you in order to start the next phrase\netc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m slightly allergic to that old fashioned attitude\nof \u2018the music stops and we all wait for the maestro to lift their hand before\nwe go on\u2019. That\u2019s something I have always actively sought to avoid, so that we\nget something that\u2019s organic. It might be that it\u2019s dictated by an actor\nwalking across the stage and reaching a certain point on the set, or someone sitting\ndown and you raise your arm in order for your downbeat to coincide with their\nbottom hitting the chair, or somebody throwing something into the air\u2026 You get\na lot of those sorts of cues where yes \u2013 it\u2019s taken from the conductor from a\ntechnical point of view, but that upbeat has been generated from within the\naction of the play rather than a musical reason from the pit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. Were there any particular scenes or numbers in the Gothenburg production where
taking cues in that way was very difficult? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I\u2019ll tell you a really silly one. It was\nin the number \u2018If You Could See Her\u2019, which was originally about the Emcee and\na gorilla having a love affair. It was an amazing idea to depict that kind of\nracism on stage in a way that is also funny. Our director and choreographer amplified\nthat in our production \u2013 they gave us a whole team of gorillas, and the story\nwas \u2018which one is his lost love?\u2019 There were about eight gorillas and the Emcee\nis trying to find the right one\u2026 which leads to all sorts of interesting things\nhappening on stage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the very end there\u2019s a little cadenza that I\nwrote for Emcee to sing, as if it was an opera. During that I popped my head\ndown. When he reached the climax of the cadenza I re-emerged with a gorilla\nmask on. He would have to take the next cue from me because sometimes I wouldn\u2019t\nbe ready! The amusing thing about that was if I had a real problem with the\nmask then he was left singing the long note forever \u2013 it all depended on how\nmuch air he\u2019d got in his lungs. That was a wonderful moment where the control\nwent from the singer down to the conductor and then back up to the singer again.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is that when he sings \u2013 \u2018through my eyes\u2019 right at the end?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exactly, yes. It was about fifteen\/twenty seconds long while I put my mask on \u2013 which is why I wrote a cadenza \u2013 and then I conducted as a gorilla until the end of the number. It was very silly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(laughs) Obviously Cabaret<\/em> is a mixture of spoken dialogue and songs. When I\u2019ve spoken to conductors about operas of a similar nature, they talk about building the tension during the spoken dialogue (this is also applies to recitative) so that it feels natural that the character will then
burst into song.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That can be trickier than people realise. The conductor is involved in that lead up, even when there\u2019s been no music for a long time. Are there are any difficult transitions in that respect in Cabaret<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a really fascinating question and the\nanswer is absolutely, yes. The way I always talk about it is \u2018an ascent into\nmusic and a descent into dialogue\u2019. Singing is like a heightened theatrical convention;\nthe idea of people wondering around doing it is such a weird one. What\u2019s unusual\nabout Cabaret<\/em> is that the reason that\nsome characters sing is different to other characters. For example, the Emcee\nsings songs that are commenting on the atmosphere of Berlin and the world of\nthe club. His or her songs were not part of the plot in a strict way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Fr\u00e4ulein Schneider\u2019s songs grew out of the romantic story between her and Schulz. It was like a traditional romantic musical except with older people, which is what made it really interesting. With \u2018So What?\u2019 the last few lines of Fr\u00e4ulein Schneider\u2019s dialogue begin to structurally have a little bit of rhythm within them. Then the orchestra starts articulating the rhythm, almost without you noticing it. The first eight bars don\u2019t have pitches, it is speech spoken in rhythm. That is a perfect example of ascending into singing. The song only becomes sung from the line \u2018when you\u2019re as old as I\u2019. So that\u2019s a really interesting way of bringing the orchestra in underneath the end of the dialogue so that it goes into singing without you really noticing. But of course, you\u2019ve got to catch that train, which is already moving, in order to join your orchestra at the right rhythm for the text. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes! I know that part. In a way Kander and Ebb are laying out how the transition will work.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So you\u2019re not having to be as proactive in making sure it works. Oh they\u2019re very good dramatists, those two\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Absolutely extraordinary. That\u2019s one of the\nreasons why I have such admiration for John Kander: as a dramaturg musician he\nis incredible. He played a similar sort of trick with \u2018Don\u2019t Tell Mama\u2019. You\nget this big intro \u2018um tata um tata\u2019 and then a piano starts playing and Sally\nspeaks, \u2018Mama thinks I\u2019m living in a convent, a secluded little convent\u2019. There\nare no pitches again. She doesn\u2019t start singing in time until the third stanza \u2018So\nplease sir if you run into my mama\u2019. But again, because the speaking is within\nbars and has rhythm to it, you\u2019re in this in-between world without even\nrealising that you haven\u2019t even yet fully ascended into song. So that was one\nof their favourite tricks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s interesting because some of the scenes were\nin silence. A lot of the scenes were underscored, so the use of silence in the\nproduction was a very deliberate one. That was another fascinating thing to\nexplore in the rehearsal room. One of the other big issues was style. The\ndifficulty in performing Mozart\u2019s Figaro<\/em>\nis not to do with complexity of the music. There\u2019s nothing in 7\/8 or 9\/16, or\npeople singing in triplets against others in 4s \u2013 it\u2019s simple music in that\nsense. The art of it is in the style \u2013 the way they do the phrasing, and how to\nget the style absolutely right for the voice of that composer so it sounds\nbeautifully like Mozart. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But John Kander is a chameleon. He can compose\nin so many different styles \u2013 from modern pop music at the time he was writing\nto 1920s jazz. In Cabaret<\/em> you\u2019ve got\nthe pure 1920s jazz numbers in the Kit Kat Club, but also Circus and Vaudeville\nare imitated at the beginning of Act II in the \u2018Kickline\u2019 number, and the old world of the Music Hall\nin the two front cloth scenes[2]<\/a>\nwith the Emcee (\u2018Two Ladies\u2019 and \u2018If You Could See Her\u2019). It\u2019s a completely\ndifferent style to the operetta he was copying when he wrote the duets between Schneider\nand Schulz (\u2018The Pineapple Song\u2019 and \u2018Married\u2019). Those are beautiful,\ndeliberately emotional, slightly cloying, sentimental operetta duets. Representing\nthe world with different styles is something that I know was in Kander\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The amazing Broadway\/Hollywood style dance\nnumbers are very long. \u2018Telephone Dance\u2019 and \u2018The Fruit Shop Dance\u2019 were seven minutes long.\nThese huge, amazing constructions were based around choreography, and the\nmusical demands to create that style meant that you use every bit of the\norchestra. They were massive filmic orchestrations as opposed to these tiny\ncabaret versions of songs that were in the club. Kurt Weill\u2019s life was a journey that finished in America,\nwith him writing pieces like Street Scene.<\/em>\nHe wanted to create American Opera as a genre. I think that\u2019s what John\nKander had in mind when he wrote \u2018So What?\u2019 and \u2018What Would You Do?\u2019 as they\nare so sophisticated and operatic in that Kurt Weill kind of way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, and you can\u2019t really appreciate that with the smaller Donmar ensemble can you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exactly! That\u2019s exactly right Hannah, you\u2019ve\nknocked it on the head. That was why I was so excited to do the full orchestral\nversion \u2013 you\u2019re able to demonstrate in a very clear way the shifts from a\nfour-piece band on stage to a massive operatic orchestra. They were very\nconscious of that change originally, and it was great to have the chance to\nreclaim it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My cousin sang in Cabaret<\/em> (it\u2019s her favourite musical). When I asked her about her experience of it as a performer, she said it\u2019s pretty easy to sight-read on the whole. But what people struggled with most were the key changes in the Finale, and also the counterpoint in \u2018Money\u2019. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes definitely. The \u2018Finale Ultimo\u2019 is actually\nbitonal \u2013 the music is in two keys at the same time. The singers come in in a\ndifferent key to the orchestra so it\u2019s very hard for them to pick up what notes\nthey should start on. This weird choice of bitonal world was quite a\nsophisticated and risky thing to do in a Broadway musical, because it sounds so\nwrong. But that was very deliberate, as it reflects that danger and\ncatastrophic world picture at the time when the Nazis came to power. The\nsingers had to work for hours and hours \u2013 we were saying \u2018no don\u2019t trust your\nears as you normally would because actually this<\/em>\nis your first note, not that. That\u2019s the orchestra key, the vocal key is different\u2019.\nThat was one of the hardest things to do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They made a deliberate philosophical choice \u2013 Hal Prince wanted the ensemble singing to be very brutalist or \u2018ultra real\u2019. He didn\u2019t want lots of \u2018MGM harmony\u2019 singing. So virtually all of the ensemble singing in the show is in unison (singing in different octaves) and there\u2019s very little harmony. Except in the other number that you\u2019re talking about. \u2018Money\u2019 was introduced for the film, it wasn\u2019t in the original musical. They had a slightly different philosophical take in the film as it wasn\u2019t the same creators as the stage version. They had more counter melodies and separate groups singing in a way that doesn\u2019t happen anywhere else in the score. So it took ages, especially because it\u2019s a highly choreographed dance and in our version it was incredibly exhausting. They are doing top-level singing (rhythmically) and top-level dancing at the same time. I think your cousin accurately recalls the two trickiest parts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the standard of dancing required was very\nhigh, it was quite a long and arduous casting process to find people that were\ngood enough dancers but who could also sing and act. You really need what they\naffectionately call \u2018triple threats\u2019 in our industry. Artists who can sing, dance\nand act as well as each other don\u2019t grow on trees, and our choreographer,\nBecky, really stretched the dancing to its full limits. It took them weeks and\nweeks of training to have the breath to be able to sing, because they were\npanting from the dancing that they had just done in the previous thirty-two\nbars. It was quite athletic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you arranged this, I presume you were working with a full score?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, you\u2019ve opened a can of worms there! In New York, where the publishers reside, they say that in Europe (as opposed to London and New York) you\u2019re only allowed to do the 1987 version. There are lots of different versions of Cabaret<\/em>. The 1966 was the original, and 1987 was the date of a massive New York revival (the original team revived it). Some things were better, some things weren\u2019t, as is always the case. The versions that you and I are used to, like the Donmar Warehouse production, are hybrids. Those powerful directors were allowed to pick and choose as if in a sweet shop and say \u2018well I\u2019ll have that from the original, I\u2019ll have that from 1987 and there was that funny little version that happened in Alabama in 1973 and we\u2019re going to have some of that\u2019. They took what they wanted to create what they saw as the best version of the play and musical score.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We petitioned long and hard to be allowed to sing some of the numbers, particularly \u2018Maybe this Time\u2019, and \u2018Mein Herr\u2019 that were written for the film. Those two numbers are so famous. For us as a team, the idea of going to a performance of Cabaret<\/em> and not hearing those would, frankly, be disappointing. You\u2019d be looking forward to hearing what this <\/em>Sally Bowles does with those amazing numbers (we were lucky to have an astonishing <\/em>Sally Bowles \u2013 I would say one of the finest there has ever been). We tried every tactic you could imagine with the publishers in order to try and get them to agree to the insertion of these numbers into the score, but they would not do it. The reason was money \u2013 the film company owns the rights to \u2018Mein Herr\u2019 and \u2018Maybe This Time\u2019, and the royalties therefore become complicated because they would have to pay a certain amount to them. It\u2019s something that you don\u2019t have to face doing Shakespeare because everybody\u2019s dead, and you can make artistic decisions for your vision of the best version of that piece. You can get permission to do those sorts of things in London and New York but because of the regional racism of the publishing world they won\u2019t allow you to do that in Gothenburg, or in Berlin (ironically)\u2026 or in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What? Oh that\u2019s ridiculous. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hmm. But regarding the score, I had to put in\nall the orchestration by hand because weirdly in Musical Theatre there\u2019s often no\nfull score. That\u2019s the case in Cabaret<\/em>.\nSo I had to go back to the trombone, oboe, flute and violin parts, and put them\nall into Sibelius software to create an orchestral score. It took three months\nand was extremely arduous \u2013 there were crossings out and all sorts of things\nfrom the original handwritten parts. Once I\u2019d done all of that work I could\nstart arranging it for my forces. I notated the original score note for note,\ncreated the original version so I now also have that. I have the only full\nscore of Cabaret<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wow. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I created another score with a bigger\norchestra for Gothenburg. It probably took about six months to arrange the\nwhole piece. It was a labour of love, but it was worth it because the orchestra\nsounded magnificent. Gothenburg Opera orchestra are one of the finest in the world,\nand they played it with such finesse and beauty \u2013 it was breathtaking. So it\nwas totally worth all that effort, and often moved me to tears. The first time\nwe ever played those massive dance sequences like \u2018The Telephone Song\u2019, with\nthe huge Hollywood studio sized orchestra, was amazing and it drew out some\nreferences that I kept in the orchestration from the original. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, there\u2019s a deliberate reference to\nStravinsky\u2019s Petrushka<\/em> in \u2018The Telephone Dance\u2019. In Petrushka <\/em>there\u2019s a famous little cornet\nsolo, and in the trumpet part in Cabaret <\/em>in\n\u2018The Telephone Dance\u2019 there\u2019s this lovely little phrase \u2013 it\u2019s only about three\nor four bars \u2013 but if you were musically minded back in 1966 that would be a\nreference you would have got and celebrated. It was really nice to be able to\nhear that, because you could never get that in the context of a six-piece band\nversion in Cabaret<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are no tempos written into the score (as with Chicago<\/em>). Did you decide on those beforehand, or was it more of an organic process?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I made some bold decisions. I\u2019ve known Cabaret<\/em> all my life, and then lived with the music literally every day for a year (studying and then orchestrating it). So by the time I came to rehearsals I knew what tempos I wanted. Weirdly enough, because of Covid I had to leave various rooms in charge of different pianists at different times \u2013 we had to split up more than we would normally because of social distancing. So I actually notated all of my tempos for the whole piece into one master score, which was then copied for all the pianists. They used metronomes to make sure they were doing the right tempos, so I could travel around the building in my mask and hear the music being played at the right speed. Then, of course, there were times when the choreographer said to me, \u2018I\u2019m doing a dance step here \u2013 it would just be great if it was a little bit faster\/slower\u2019. So the dancing considerations would affect the tempo, but there were also acting considerations. For example, our Fr\u00e4ulein Schneider was principally an actress who sings, as opposed to a singer who acts. Because of that, her natural singing style was like sung speech, which often meant that she wanted to do it slightly faster to match the psychological speed of the text in her head. We changed a lot of those tempos in her music for that reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interesting.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would say it was definitely a very structured\nfirst bowl from me, but it became more organic and more of a discussion in the\nrehearsal room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So they bounced off your original suggestions.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exactly. That was very much something to do with\nthe piece itself and the circumstances within which it was produced. Normally I\nwould go into the rehearsal room with a much more open heart and say \u2018what\ntempo do you feel this at? I feel it at this tempo, how is that for you?\u2019 But\nbecause I was moving from room to room so much I had to have control over what\nmy music staff were doing. There were three pianists working in different rooms,\nand I had to know that we were\nbeing consistent for the actors, otherwise it wouldn\u2019t be fair. I probably had\nmore direct control over the music than I have done in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ending of the 1993 Dunmar Warehouse production, when Alan Cumming takes off his leather jacket revealing the striped pyjamas underneath, is incredibly powerful. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah I agree with you. Our big stage version of\nthat finale included every single member of the cast, including some of the children\ncoming out from the very darkness at the back of the stage. They emerged\nwearing those concentration camp uniforms and walked very slowly and without\nany expression on their faces singing that whole number. Eventually the whole\ncast was in one line on the Gothenburg stage, staring out at the audience,\nuplit from below. It was so powerful because it gave you some sense (in a\ntheatrical way) of the scale of this lack of humanity. What was fantastic about\nthe Donmar Production\u2019s ending with Alan Cumming was to see that man of such\nlife, vigour and sensuality suddenly there pathetically dressed in that way.\nBut to see fifty like that also gave you that sense of how massive it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m getting shivers just thinking about it. It\u2019s so difficult to understand how a culture that was so free, cosmopolitan, sexually experimental and open-minded had it all stripped away more and more over a number of years. In most respects these were people who had lives very much like ours, and it\u2019s so hard to understand how this could have possibly happened.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think you\u2019ve just articulated the reason why Kander\nand Ebb wrote Cabaret<\/em>. They were attracted\nby how timely it was in 1966, as it is right now, sadly, because of the\ndirection of much of the politics in the world. In Cabaret<\/em> you are confronted by a sense of that ability to whitewash and eradicate individual\nfreedom. It demonstrates a culture where people could be genuinely free to be themselves.\nThat was all happening in the Weimar Republic, it was an incredible moment in\nhistory. But what is terrifying was the success with which the Nazis eradicated\nit from history. Generally people now look back and are aware of Paris\nin the 1920s, but Berlin? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was the Weimar Republic?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> In Musical Theatre it is common for\nwoodwind\/brass players to play a number of instruments, unlike in classical\norchestras where for example, the clarinet may play the E flat or Bass clarinet\nbut not the flute or oboe. See the interview from the last issue with Gareth\nValentine on Chicago<\/em> for a more\ndetailed explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> \u2018Front Cloth\u2019 scenes explained in David\u2019s words: \u2018in old fashioned\ntheatre, when you had quick changes into a scene that was, for example, between\ntwo characters, they would drop in a cloth that was about six feet upstage from\nthe front of the stage. That was called a \u2018front cloth\u2019. Then they\u2019d bring on\nthose characters and you\u2019d be straight into the next scene and wouldn\u2019t feel a\nthing. It gave you a kind of intimacy to those moments, and it was one of the\nreally interesting challenges they had in 1966. When you look at the score\nthere\u2019s virtually no music from the end of a big production number to a spoken\nscene between two characters that might be very intimate. And that\u2019s how they\nused to solve that problem \u2013 they\u2019d either bring in something from the side of\nthe stage to the front, like a room, or they\u2019d drop the front cloth in and put\nthe characters is front of that while they re-organised the stage behind the\ncloth, for the next big ensemble number. We\nwere true to the front cloth scenes from the original Cabaret <\/em>when we did it in Gothenburg. It\u2019s\nfun because you can really transform what\u2019s going on behind that curtain in the\nfew moments of that scene and then reveal something amazing upstage afterwards\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4th March 2021 David White is a Musical Supervisor\/Musical Director\/Orchestrator. Recent credits include: Fisherman\u2019s Friends The Musical (2021 Truro); […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1108,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-public","pmpro-has-access","clearfix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/David-White.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8YX8Q-hx","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1087"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1983,"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions\/1983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}