New and timely local production of ‘Cabaret’ opens at Orlando Shakes this week

At first glance it might seem strange that a musical from the 1960s based on a Christopher Isherwood book from 1939, later remade into a movie starring Liza Minnelli in 1972, would be at its most chillingly current in the good ol’ U.S. of A. circa 2025 … but here we are.

Cabaret tells a tale of the creeping rise of Nazism during the last days of the Weimar Republic Germany in the 1930s seen largely through the eyes of performers and patrons at the Kit Kat Klub cabaret.

Cabaret — the theatrical production and movie — does this with gorgeous musical numbers and songs, with glitz and glamour, with gallows humor aplenty and wrenching emotion.

Orlando Shakes’ production of this clarion call through song and dance is directed by Steve MacKinnon and choreographed by Tara Jeanne Vallee. The musical runs for a month and you really should check it out; you might just recognize a few parallels with folks in power now who think tomorrow belongs to them.

7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 5, through March 2, Orlando Shakes, 812 E. Rollins St., orlandoshakes.org, $25-$75.

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This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2025.