Life Is Beautiful on the Willows Theatre Stage

Cabaret, Kander & Ebb’s award-winning musical, opens February 3^rd at the Willows Theatre in Concord

Previews begin January 30 - running through March 12, 2006: tickets on sale now 

Concord, CA.  January 10, 2006 – The “wunderbar” musical Cabaret, which blended a feverish period of history with the vibrancy of a modern song-and-dance show -- and won all the available prizes and awards when it began its triumphant three-year run in New York in 1966 -- will be presented at the Willows Theatre from January 30 through March 12, 2006. Cabaret is set in Berlin at the beginning of the 1930s, just before the storm and the storm-troopers took over Germany, when a sense of impending doom drove people to a forced and frantic gaiety. It echoes the frenzied bitter-sweetness expressed in Marlene Dietrich’s iconic movie of that era, The Blue Angel, as well as the music of Kurt Weill.

A then-young Englishman, Christopher Isherwood, captured the despair of Berlin at that time in a book of “Berlin Stories,” which are the indirect source for Cabaret.  Indirect because one of the stories, titled “Sally Bowles,” centered on a dizzy English girl adrift in the pre-Hitler depravity, was first turned into a successful play by John van Druten in 1951 called I Am a Camera, and this was used by playwright Joe Masteroff and songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb as the direct basis for Cabaret.

Cabaret begins in a gaudy nightclub where a mincing, smirking, clown-faced master of ceremonies – to be played by Mindy Stover – sings an impudent song of welcome to the cabaret’s uneasy customers, promising them naughty songs and enticingly half-dressed girls, all of which are indeed delivered.  Kristin Stokes takes on the role of Sally Bowles, an English girl who has fled her family’s stuffiness to become a chanteuse at the Kit Kat Klub (“Don’t Tell Mama” is her bouncy opening number).  The Kit Kat is a brassy pleasure-haunt of pre-Hitler Berlin where anxiety-ridden Germans sought to blur their vision of impending disaster with wild night life and joyless sin.  Geoffrey Kidwell plays the young American Clifford Bradshaw, with whom Sally has a love affair.  Their romance inevitably founders because Sally, half-tart and half-innocent, cannot give up her raffish nightclub existence. 

The other rueful romance unfolded in Cabaret involves Fraulein Schneider, played by Barbara Grant, and Herr Schultz, played by Stu Klitsner, a middle-aged pair whose hopes of ending their separate loneliness with a life together are broken by the cruel realities of the encroaching Nazi movement: she is Gentile and he is a Jewish fruit-store owner.

 But though Cabaret captures the foreboding atmosphere of the period just before the Third Reich, it dwells only incidentally on doom and decadence.  It is chiefly a fun show from the opening moment when the leering Master of Ceremonies sings the now famous “Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome” and brings out the raucous Kit Kat girls to entertain the crowd.  Toss in other well-known numbers like “Life Is a Cabaret” and “The Money Song” and it quickly becomes evident that Cabaret is a thrilling assemblage of bright, tuneful music by Kander and Ebb set against the tinseled era before a terrible madness descended on Berlin.

Cabaret began its three-year run in New York to critical bravos in the fall of 1966, picking up both the N.Y. Drama Critics Award and the Tony Award as the best musical of the season, and running for 1,166 performances.    The film version was directed by Bob Fosse and won eight Academy Awards.  The musical was revived on Broadway in 1987, and again in 1998, when it received four Tonys.

Willows Theatre Managing Director Andrew Holtz will direct the show, which opens February 3 and runs through March 12, 2006, at the Willows Theatre, 1975 Diamond Boulevard, Concord, CA.  Preview performances begin January 30.

THE CAST

Mindy Stover* - Emcee (Sacramento) returns to the Willows stage, having previously made her Bay Area debut there as Sister Mary Amnesia in the West Coast premiere of Meshuggah-Nuns!  Mindy has performed at Sacramento Music Circus, Timothy Busfield’s B Street Theatre, Children’s Theatre of California, Fantasy Theatre, and Sacramento Theatre Company.  She has also appeared at the Lycian Centre in New York, the Gorilla Theatre in Florida, the Ensemble Theatre of Santa Barbara, and in a European tour of The Rocky Horror Show (as Columbia).

Kristin Stokes – Sally Bowles (Fremont) is making her debut at the Willows Theatre with Cabaret.  She recently completed a run of Into the Woods at TheatreWorks, after having attended the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts (PCPA).  While at PCPA, she appeared in Brigadoon, Annie, and My Way.

Geoffrey Kidwell – Clifford Bradshaw (Los Angeles) is making his debut with the Willows.  He is a recent graduate of UCLA’s School of Theatre, Film and Television.  While at UCLA, he performed in Hair, Hello Again, and Elektra Fragments.  He recently worked in a number of regional theatres in shows such as Beauty and the Beast, Sweeney Todd, and King Lear.

Barbara Grant* – Fraulein Schneider (Danville) has appeared in numerous Willows productions including Over the Tavern, The Spitfire Grill, You Can’t Take It With You, Joyful Noise, Rags, Brimstone, and John Muir’s Mountain Days.  She has also performed with CenterREP, Role Players, and the Celebration for Life AIDS benefit.  Barbara is also the Development Director for the Willows Theatre.

Stu Klitsner* – Herr Schultz (Walnut Creek) has been a Bay Area mainstay of stage and screen for almost 40 years, appearing in the long-running stage hit Under the Yum-Yum Tree, as a regular on TV’s The Streets of San Francisco, and in the feature films The Towering Inferno and The Dead Pool.  His Willows Theatre stage credits include Brimstone, Fiddler on the Roof, The Rothschilds, You Can’t Take it With You, Rags and John Muir’s Mountain Days.

*Member, Actors’ Equity Association

PRODUCTION TEAM

Andrew Holtz (director) has staged over 25 productions for the Willows Theatre since 1989, and musical directed many more.  He won Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle awards for his direction of the musical 1776 in 2001 and for his musical direction three years in a row for Brimstone, Dreamgirls, and In the Beginning at the Willows.  A graduate of Stanford University, Mr. Holtz studied music theory and composition a the Juilliard School, is the Managing Director of the Willows Theatre Company, and serves on the Board of the San Francisco Business Arts Council.  He received official recognition for "Outstanding Contribution to the Arts" from the Arts and Culture Commission of Contra Costa County (AC5) in October 2004.

The design team for Cabaret includes Shaun Carroll (Properties and Set Dressing), Jon Retsky (Lighting), Peter Crompton (Scenery), Melissa Torchia (Costumes), and Chris Chesnut (Sound).  Jon M. Marshall* is production stage manager.  John Butterfield will provide the rousing choreography.   

Ticket and Schedule Information

Tickets are $30-$35 with discounts for students (6-18), seniors (65+), and groups (10+).  To purchase tickets call (925) 798-1300 or visit the Willows Theatre Company Web site at www.willowstheatre.org.  Performances are Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m., and Sunday at 7:30 p.m., with matinees Wednesdays at 3:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m., and Sundays at 3 p.m.

The Willows Theatre is located at 1975 Diamond Blvd. next to CompUSA and REI in the Willows Shopping Center in Concord, across the street from the Concord Hilton and one block east of the Willow Pass Road exit off Highway 680.

The Willows Theatre Company daytime box office is located at 1425 Gasoline Alley, Concord, at the corner of Bisso Lane, one block north of Concord Avenue.  The daytime box office hours are Monday-Saturday 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. and Sunday Noon-5 p.m.  The theatre box office and will-call window, located in the theater lobby, opens one hour prior to each performance. For more information call (925) 798-1300.

Recipient of the 2002 Cyril Award of the San Francisco Business Arts Council for Nonprofit Arts Excellence, the Willows Theatre Company is led by Artistic Director Richard Elliott and Managing Director Andrew Holtz. The Willows Theatre Company 2005 sponsors are Rocco’s Pizzeria of Walnut Creek, Industrial Lumber of Martinez, Contra Costa Newspapers, Alphagraphics of Walnut Creek, The Crowne Plaza Concord, and US Bank (student/teacher discount ticket sponsor).