A Pineapple For You

Cabaret and fascism in the twenty-first century

One of the reasons I’ve studied “Cabaret” for almost forty years now is because it evolved so much, going from real life to short story, to novel, to play, to musical, to film, and then back to musical. I’ve always been obsessed with the designs and optimism of the Art Deco Period. “Cabaret” helps me understand how we started with flappers, bathtub gin, jazz, skyscrapers, flying machines, optimism, and unbridled progress but ended with gas chambers and atomic bombs.

If you look at what happened to architecture before and after the war, gone were the stylized angels adorning our buildings and looking heavenward, replaced by straight lines and sharp angles and almost no adornment. The difference between the two is most likely what happened in Berlin, which is a story told but not told in Cabaret.

The climax of the original story and the musical is the act of Sally Bowles aborting what we assume is Cliff’s child. In talks to make a film of the musical, there were concerns that the real-life English socialite, turned flapper, turned intellectual, Jean Ross, that Sally Bowles was based on, threatened to halt the production with a lawsuit. Her issue was not that it discussed her abortion, which she’d written about herself extensively, but that it painted her as an airhead, which she absolutely wasn’t. Isherwood's excuse for doing this was that he wanted to preserve Ross’s privacy, but he didn’t want her to be the focus of the story. I’ve always found his explanation lacking and probably not honest. Fortunately, she relented, and the film was made.

As much as I admire Bob Fosse, I’ve always found his interpretation of Cabaret lacking. He velveted his claws with regard to Sally’s abortion for fear of censorship. It’s really saying something when Bob Fosse is concerned about censorship. Fosse also thought the relationship between Herr Schultz and Fraulein Schneider was boring and all but left it out of the film.

I always thought that was a mistake. One of the reasons “Cabaret” survives as a story is that its true action isn’t what you think it is. The love between Schultz and Schneider comes to the very forefront of the story because you know what happens to them once the curtain comes down. Cliff and Sally return to their homes and have happy, productive lives. That’s not true of many of the other characters. What makes “Cabaret” such an important story is that you know while you’re watching it that at least half the cast dies a year or two after the action of the play, not because of what they do, but because of what they are.

Sally aborts Cliff’s child because she senses what’s coming in Berlin. Not knowing how this will end, she chooses not to bring a child into that world. In real life, Jean Ross wrote extensively about this. Had she known that one-day fascism would end, she might have chosen differently, but from where she sat in Berlin in 1930, there was no way to know this.

People who support Donald Trump ask me if I think they’re going to be fascists. People who don’t support Donald Trump ask me if this will end in fascism. My very honest answer is that whatever happens, I doubt if they’ll call it fascism. These qualities that created Adolph Hitler didn’t begin in Germany. They didn’t begin in the twentieth century. These are Kane and Able level issues. Ultimately, what happens next is up to the people doing it.

In the grocery store today, I was met with an enormous display of fresh pineapples. Pineapples are an ancient symbol of hospitality and friendship. I took the sight of them as a sort of omen.

If you bought me diamonds
If you bought me pearls
If you bought me roses
Like some other gents
Might bring to other girls
It couldn't please me more
Than the gift I see
A pineapple for me

The current version of Cabaret that you’d get if you wanted to produce it includes a song originally written for Sally but now sung by the Emcee.

Hearts grow hard
On a windy street
Lips grow cold
With the rent to meet
So if you kiss me
If we touch
Warning's fair
I don't care very much

The current staging of the musical ends with the Emcee removing his overcoat to reveal a black and white striped concentration camp uniform with a pink triangle pinned to his breast, and the lights go out.

Will this all end in Fascism? You tell me. No, You show me.