With warnings about the rise of fascism and commentary on the dangers of complacency in the face of oppression, the musical Cabaret has remained popular for more than five decades.
Emily Goglia is warming up to rehearse the titular song from Kander and Ebb’s musical Cabaret. She’s playing Sally Bowles, the eccentric and vivacious singer, in a role made famous on the big screen by Liza Minnelli.
"Sally is an iconic character. She is exciting and wild," Goglia told KCLU.
Bowles' character and the events in the show serve as the backdrop for the rise of fascism and Nazism in Germany in the early 1930s.
"She kind of represents the people that think that politics don't really have anything to do with them. 'Oh, it's just politics. It won't affect me,'" said Goglia.
"Everything feels so relevant. Good theater and good storytelling and good pieces of art are always political, right? And so my hope is that people come to see this just for the entertainment. And then all of a sudden they're hit in the face with this whammy of like, 'Whoa, I am really relating to this in ways that I didn't expect,'" she said.
It's a timely production, said the show’s director Michael Matthews.
"Cabaret feels like it could have been written yesterday," said Matthews. "It's so relevant, it's so precise in what it has to say, where it's basically a reflection of humanity, but also a reflection of who we are and where we are right now. I think that's why the work has stood the chance of time and why it still speaks to us today."
Goglia added, "But the show is entertaining and it is light and it's funny and exciting and the dancing is incredible and the songs are so iconic and so apart from all of the socio-political commentary, it's a great show to see and that's why it's still around. I mean it's been so popular since it came out in what, 1972?"
Cabaret, presented by 5-Star Theatricals, opens Friday, March 14 at 7:30 p.m. and runs through March 30 at the Scherr Forum Theatre in Thousand Oaks.
