Cabaret in Captivity Redux

We were privileged yesterday to attend the 2025 edition of Cabaret in Captivity: Songs and Sketches from Terezin, now in its 12th year. I saw it for the first time and reviewed it here back in 2023.

To that original review I would add a few things. One, it’s quite different watching this show from a perspective inside an authoritarian regime, where human beings are being seized and shipped to foreign jails like animals. The last time I saw it, it was strictly about the historic Holocaust. This time, it was about a potential new one. The piece is thus more immediate at the moment. One found oneself exchanging meaningful looks with strangers. Who knows where we’ll be next year, and the next? Hopefully not watching this show in a concentration camp.

Also, it was a different experience seeing the production at Torn Page. Given the exhibitions of ghostly conjuring I have seen there previously ranging from Jody Christopherson’s St. Kilda to Turning Another Page, Cabaret in Captivity, harmonizes with that track record by channeling the voices of the dead and allowing them to speak (and beautifully sing) again.

Third alteration was some shifting of the cast. Our old friend Mel Delancey (whom I’ve known since she was a literal kid, and is kind of a cabaret monster) was a welcome addition to the cast, and it added another dimension of specialness to what was already a perfect experience, my favorite show in UTC #61’s repertoire. Lara Lewison’s violin pyrotechnics brought an element of flash to this otherwise bittersweet piece of theatre, and that too was a welcome new note . The rest of the ensemble includes the incredible clown, fluent-in-German actress, opera singer, and clarinetist Jenny Lee Mitchell who collaborates with Edward Einhorn in assembling these revues; Seth Gilman, a man out of time who is able to sell the most old-fashioned of songs as though born in another century; Katarina Vizina, who brings native authenticity in addition to her talent; the trusty tenor of UTC#61 regular Craig Anderson; and the voice and musical direction of the ubiquitous Maria Dessena.

If you can catch it at this time next year, do. There’s nothing quite like it.