Welcome to the Kit Kat Club and Towson’s production of “Cabaret”
By: McKenna Graham, Assistant Arts & Life Editor
As finals near and work accumulates, students searching for some brief reprieve from all of the stress can go hear the music play at Towson’s production of “Cabaret” – high-energy, appropriately bawdy, and unexpectedly sincere, the show is the perfect escape into early twentieth century Germany, on the brink of Nazi regime and struggling to reconcile that with society’s livelihood.
As the emcee requests, leave your troubles outside. In the theatre, life is beautiful, the girls (and boys) are beautiful, the live band onstage is flawless, and amid laugh-out-loud scenes are real tear-jerkers as director Stephen Nunns explores the themes of the show within the frame of today’s political and societal climate.
“If [the audience] can think about it in terms of their own lives, connect it to their own lives in some way, shape or form, that would be great,” Nunns said. “I think it’s highly entertaining, so I hope they’ll be entertained as well. If it can make them think a little bit, that’s great.”
Nunns made an interesting choice in casting senior acting major Christy Czajkowski as the emcee, or Master of Ceremonies, the enigmatic, frivolous and charismatic character who presides over the Kit Kat Club where a good portion of the play is set – the role is generally played by a man, albeit a lipstick-wearing one, but Czajkowski’s performance androgenizes the role and takes it to a whole new level.
“I wasn’t expecting the role that I got and it’s been wild,” Czajkowski said. “It’s one I know I’m never going to get again, so I tried to take it and run with it.”
Czajkowski’s emcee was sexual, dramatic and irresistible, drawing attention simply with the presence and earning high praise as a favorite among audience members.
“Christy killed it,” sophomore acting major Kasie Lerner said.
Czajkowski drew inspiration from Marlene Dietrich, a German singer from the thirties with a “beautifully low voice.”
“Once I found the voice, I started to find the character,” Czajkowski said. “I was trying to think of a backstory, because actors love doing that, but the more I thought about it the more I realized, the emcee is more an embodiment of the people of Germany, not a specific person.”
The Kit Kat Club as a whole took on a new spotlight in this production; “the girls” were not the only performers – male entertainers joined the ranks of performers, bringing a sense of equality and balance to the overly sexualized scenes.
“In other productions I’ve seen, the Kit Kat Club is really just ‘sex, sex, sex’ and that wasn’t the case here,” Lerner said. “They were there to tell the story.”
New meaning was given to well-loved characters like Sally Bowles (Molly Cohen), an English entertainer who is fighting for stardom; Cohen’s reprisal of the role creates new levels of depth and moral anguish as she struggles with a secret aspect of her identity in the face of an unforgiving regime.
In preparing for the role, junior acting major Cohen spoke with Nunns and said of it, “We thought about how much worse it makes her as a character if [her secret] is something she has and chooses not to do anything about, and just thinks about herself.”
Senior geography and economics major Molly Sokolis found the show to be poignant in unexpected ways, pointing out the underlying politics and social dangers.
“It was very interesting, but very good,” Sokolis said. “Funny, but I feel like maybe it shouldn’t have been funny, but it was still funny.”
Cliff Bradshaw (Griffin DeLisle) serves as a sort of foil for Bowles, the emcee, and other characters – he is an American writer in Germany to become the next great author, and he stands as a beacon for the audience to relate to as his sense of apprehension and frustration grows. DeLisle’s performance is reassuring to the audience amid characters who support or fear the Nazi regime to varying degrees, and stands as a presence to find both familiarity and camaraderie in.
Elizabeth McLaren, a sophomore psychology major, worked on the production as part of the sound crew, and wanted to make it known that there is a reason the audience finds these scenes so horrific and yet so understandable.
“We think of Nazi Germany as this awful, awful thing that happened long ago,” McLaren said, “But what I hope people take away is that you can adapt these themes into things we see today.”
The play presents a wide array of political viewpoints on the Nazi regime – Sam Pomerantz’s Ernst Ludwig is an active member of the political party, Cliff is adamantly against the Nazis, Sally ignores the political climate, Fraulein Schneider (Rachel Bailey) is a fearful citizen who does what she must to survive and who must deal with her love for Herr Schultz (Alex Wynd), a Jew, and the emcee disregards all seriousness.
“I hope people keep in mind dangers of not only being oblivious to what’s going on, but with my character, thinking it’s a big joke,” Czajkowski said.
The further along the production progresses, the more apparently certain messages assert themselves, like the one Cohen’s character gets across, which is, as she said, “Making the choice to not do anything, and sitting back, and how that is just as evil as doing bad actions.”
Sophomore Jake Zeranko, who is studying acting, applauded the entire production.
“To me it came off as an effort to make the story of the Cabaret something more abstract… not something you’re supposed to focus on,” Zeranko said. “[It’s not] ‘these are sexy men and women,’ they’re there to prolong the story and they are Germany, you’re watching the change in Germany through them.”
This production of Cabaret is at once gut-busting and tear-jerking, and there’s something in it for anyone. There’s so much more to this story than meets the eye, and this production takes that theme to its emotional and daunting conclusion.
Dialect coach BettyAnn Leeseberg-Lange and choreographer Rebecca Dorman were named by different people as two contributors who had a great degree of impact on the performance in shaping it and improving it.
Stage manager Beca Wiseman labeled the experience as transformative.
“I work with such talented people and it’s such a pleasure to do that every day,” Wiseman, a senior theatre production and design major, said. “I feel like we bring [the audience] into this world in a very interesting way that a lot of shows don’t do.”
Performances of “Cabaret” continue this week, and tickets can be bought in advance online. (atevents.towson.edu/event/cabaret_6222#.WQ4WX7zhyTl)
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This is not only an article about the art of theater but also a lesson on how art can reflect and impact society. Hopefully in the future, there will be more articles like this so that the audience can better understand the connection between art and life.
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The detail about Czajkowski drawing from Marlene Dietrich’s low voice to find the emcee is such a smart insight, and it makes sense why the role read as an embodiment of Germany rather than one character. Nunns’s choice to balance the Kit Kat Club’s performers also feels like the kind of directorial decision that quietly changes how the politics land. It reminds me of how small structural puzzles—one letter, one word, one step—can build toward something larger than the pieces suggest. I’ve been working through daily word ladders on free daily word ladder game, and the steady progression from a four-letter start to FEET mirrors that same idea of incremental change, which feels oddly fitting after reading this. Thanks for the thoughtful coverage of a production that clearly aimed to make audiences think.
Enjoyed this deep dive into Towson’s Cabaret, especially the note about casting Christy Czajkowski as the emcee and how that choice androgenizes a role usually played with a knowing wink. It’s a good reminder that Cabaret works best when the Kit Kat Club feels like a real ensemble rather than pure spectacle, and your point about the male entertainers balancing the stage fits that reading. If you ever want a lighter, low-stakes warm-up for a theatre crowd, Noillirk daily guessing game is a fun one to try. Shows staged between finals and grim headlines, like this one, need a little irony to land, and I think you captured that tension well.
It’s refreshing to read a review that goes beyond the surface spectacle of “Cabaret” and actually engages with Nunns’ directorial choices, especially the decision to cast Czajkowski as the emcee and what that androgyny does to the Kit Kat Club’s dynamics. The point about the male performers balancing the usually hyper-sexualized club scenes is one I hadn’t considered, and it genuinely reframes how the story lands. As someone who likes digging into the mechanics behind a production, I’d add that the sourcing and last-checked dates on pages like this beginner guide to Clover RPG are the kind of detail that makes a write-up trustworthy over time. Anyway, Cohen’s take on Sally’s moral anguish sounds like the emotional core here. Good to see student theatre tackling difficult themes with real thought.
Enjoyed this write-up on Towson’s “Cabaret” — the detail about Czajkowski drawing on Marlene Dietrich for the emcee’s low voice is a nice bit of insight that most reviews skip. The point about rebalancing the Kit Kat Club so male entertainers share the stage feels like a genuine interpretive choice rather than a gimmick, and it tracks with Nunns’s aim of making the material land for a modern audience. For readers who like digging into how a production’s ideas get documented, I’ve found that fan-maintained reference sites with clear sourcing are a useful complement to coverage like this — the unofficial PokeBonk game wiki is a decent example of that approach, though it’s a different medium entirely. Either way, it’s good to see student theatre getting substantive critical attention.
Really enjoyed this write-up on Towson’s Cabaret, especially the detail about casting Christy Czajkowski as the Emcee and drawing on Marlene Dietrich’s low voice to build the character. That idea of the Emcee as an embodiment of the German people rather than a single person is a smart reading, and it explains why the Kit Kat Club scenes feel more unsettling than in productions that lean on spectacle alone. What struck me in the piece was how balancing the male and female performers let the club serve the story instead of just the shock value. I often think about how framing choices like that work in game design, and similar questions come up in the Roblox robot-building title Steel Fighters, where I keep a titles and buffs reference listing all 22 titles and their requirements. Either way, a thoughtful production worth seeing before finals week.