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Pop star Adam Lambert and Moana star Auli’i Cravalho will make their Broadway debuts in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club on September 16, 2024, the production announced today. Current stars Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin will play their last performances on September 14, as previously scheduled.
Lambert will play the sinister Emcee, who presides over a louche nightclub in Weimar Berlin and whose antics reflect the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany. Cravalho will be Sally Bowles, a fast-living British singer with delusions of stardom. Bebe Neuwirth and Steven Skybell, who touchingly play the musical's older couple, are scheduled to stay on.
This revival of Joseph Masteroff, John Kander and Fred Ebb's darkly brilliant 1966 musical, directed by Rebecca Frecknall, received excellent reviews in London but was more coolly received by New York critics, including me. Nonetheless, it received eight Tony Award nominations—winning one, for Tom Scutt's environmental scenic design—and has been a hit at the box office: Last week, it was the fifth-highest-grossing show on Broadway, with the highest average ticket price ($193.57).
Among the complaints that New York critics have had about Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club is that the lead actors do not sing the score attractively. That seemed a deliberate choice on Fracknall's part, in keeping with the production's in-your-face attitude. But in casting Lambert and Cravalho, who are superb vocalists, the production may be signaling a shift in approach. Lambert rose to prominence in 2009 as the runner-up on American Idol, and has subbed in for Freddie Mercury—no easy feat—in international tours with the classic-rock group Queen; in addition to voicing the title role in Moana at age 16, and originating the modern Disney standard "How Far I'll Go," Cravalho played queer outcast Janis in the hit 2023 film musical Mean Girls.
Replacement casting was a major feature of the 1998 and 2014 Broadway revivals of Cabaret that were directed by Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall. If the box office holds up for this one, Broadway may get the chance to see many Emcees and Sallys in the years to come—but it will be hard to top these ones for sheer vocal talent.
You can buy tickets to Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club here.