Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club

Wednesday, January 15th 2025, my friends and I saw the 2021/2024 revival of Cabaret the Musical with the best Master of Ceremonies I have ever seen, David Merino. And it. Was. Beautiful. Cabaret is famously known for its Brechtian theatrical style of addressing the social issues between different groups of people effected by the rise of the third reich as the Nazi Party began to take over the lives of the people of Berlin. Although the story is rooted post stock market crash and pre World War II, the messages transcend location and time as they tackle themes that have harmed society since before the dawn of feudalism. The show, being divided into two sections (the story and the cabaret show), provides a wonderfully dreadful understanding through a mesh of depressing dramatic scenes and untimely upbeat musical numbers reflecting the message of said depressing scene of how a society can choose to face the reality of their political climate and do something about it or they can run away from their problems, live in denial / servitude, and forget all of their troubles inside of the Kit Kat Club, as the EMCEE encourages, until it unfortunately hits you like a ton of bricks and you are unable to deny, avoid, or are too late to change the reality of what the world you live in has become. Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club has done a lot to remind us through humor and devastation that racism, nationalism, homophobia, poverty and irresponsible parental decisions, among other things, effect everyone, and turning a blind eye to the damage that it will do is compliance with evil. But enough about that, I want talk about the aesthetic! It truly was a production to behold, and coming from a film major who loves production design, I was in love.

"In here, life is beautiful! The girls are beautiful! Even the Orchestra is beautiful!" And the girls and the orchestra were beautiful. They had the wonderfully talented Auli'i Cravalho as Sally Bowles and someone on the banjo, I respect that. I refuse to spoil more on the production design, but know that it was colorful, gorgeous in texture, and still remained true to the basics of German fashion in the 1930's. Using what I knew from that, this was the outfit I was supposed to piece together. I made last minute changes to account for the weather, but when I arrived at the theater, I was surprised to see how on theme with the Cabaret dancers I would have been. So if you choose to see Cabaret while it's still on Broadway and you want to get dressed up, I hope this outfit can act as an inexpensive guide on what you can piece together from clothing items in your home and maybe one or two things ordered off of amazon.

Starting off with make up, cabarets have become usually distinguishable through campy, over glamorized and unnatural shapes and colors on a white painted or non-painted face. I decided to not paint my face (because the white paint takes a long time to come off). It can be seen as a fanatical combination of clown paint and drag make up, it really depends on how drastic of a look you're going for. A wonderful example of a general standard for cabaret make up is Tim Curry's Frank-n-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture show. Thin drawn on eyebrows with a high rise and potent eyeshadow, a bright blush and glossy red lip. For me, I based my make up and outfit around David Bowie's suit and make up for the Life On Mars? music video since it matched my red hair. I dramatized my eyebrows giving them a sharp angle to make them look synthetic, blued up my eyes and reddened my cheeks so both pigments could be seen very clearly to contrast my natural skin tones. I outlined my eyes with black eyeliner and drew on long dramatic bottom lashes to make them stick out above the blue. The drawn on lip was to outline a synthetic cupid's bow lip shape which seemed to have been popular with actresses like Clara Bow on screen at the time. The overall goal for me was to take what I knew seemed natural and make it look artistically unnatural to come off as campy. Head scarves and pearls also paired well as these were popular accessories for the 1930's.

And I think I did a damn good job.

For the outfit, my thoughts were that they're in Germany in the 1930's and their whole theme is debauchery and taboo. There's gonna be people in corsets, stockings and garters, shorts and heeled boots. And I was right. I layered a black bodysuit under white shorts and a robins egg blue lantern sleeved button down that I DIYed for a previous Woodstock-like event so it could look like I'm wearing a cravat built into the shirt. The only concern with the shirt is that it has to bring character . I topped it off with my black steel-boned corset, but if the corset were a different color it probably would've looked better and popped more. To make up for my lack of garters, I safety pinned one edge of my stockings to the bottom on my shorts to give it the shape and illusion of a garter. Cabaret and Burlesque are the same in the aspect of the thrill of the tease, showing off that bit of skin between the stocking and the shorts really brought the outfit together.

This entire look is barely historically accurate, but I think I rather have dressed for the aesthetic instead of historical accuracies for Nazi Germany. I highly recommend seeing Cabaret live if possible, ever the opportunity arise, it will change. Your. Life.