Eva Noblezada’s Last Days in Cabaret: A Review
Cabaret has been playing in the West End since 2022, when it was splashily revived with Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley. So, it is fair to say that this writer is a bit late to the party. Nonetheless, with the current casting of the extremely talented West End and Broadway star Eva Noblezada nearing the end of her run, it seemed worth checking in on the long-running show.
The show takes place in a 1930s Berlin burlesque club—the Kit Kat Club—hosted by the flamboyant Emcee. Sally Bowles, a flighty, dreamy performer, is fired and moves in with American wannabe novelist Clifford Bradshaw, who resorts to carrying out shady tasks in order to pay the rent in a shabby boarding house. The boarding house is run by Fraulein Schneider, who strikes up an autumnal relationship with one of her tenants, Herr Schulz, a Jewish fruit seller. Meanwhile, the Nazis are rising to power.
Cabaret is an immersive experience. Audience members are invited to arrive early and ushered into a dim cocktail bar, where one can partake in very nice, overpriced, quite potent bespoke cocktails. Musicians—in this case a violinist and a pianist—add to the atmosphere from behind a gauzy curtain. It is a bit cramped, to be honest, though this is alleviated when a second bar opens upstairs: the aptly named Gold Bar, bright with faux opulence. There are rough sketches of classical-seeming figures on the walls, and a balcony above the bar from behind which gold foil spills upwards and covers part of the ceiling. On the balcony, an androgynous-looking dancer moves in a restrained, modern style. Another dancer occupies the floor, and the two play off each other to a degree.
Into the theatre space itself, dancers circulate among audience members who have taken their seats early. It is slightly risqué. Musicians also roam about, eventually coalescing to form a small band. The music in the theatre is repetitive, pulsating. All of this is designed to create the effect that one is entering a seedy burlesque venue in 1930s Berlin—the real Kit Kat Club—not a West End theatre at all. It works, but all the warm-up is just that; this is not a pre-show per se. One does not have to arrive the full hour and fifteen minutes early to get the full experience.
The staging is elegant and intimate. The show is performed in the round, with a circular stage surrounded by two rows of small tables, complete with lamp and telephone, adding to the impression of attending an actual burlesque club. The staging is also impressively versatile: not only is it a nightclub, but with minimal changes it convinces as a boarding house and a train station. There is a central lift that raises a circular portion of the stage and a trap door through which performers can emerge in their multitude.
The burlesque show within the show is bawdy and fun. Sally Bowles comes on stage dressed in a babyish costume, cavorts around, and asks the audience whether they can see her pants. “Good for you!” she yells; the Emcee and the cast of exotically dressed male and female dancers contort themselves into sexual positions; there is spanking, waggling tongues, sexy miming with whisks for goodness’ sake. There are also a couple of hopeful romantic threads: Cliff and Sally do appear to be in love; Herr Schulz and Fraulein Schneider sing over a pineapple (Herr Schulz’s earnest love gift) and become engaged.
However, the show comes into its own in the second half, when, in one shocking moment (prompting a genuine gasp from the audience), the Nazi ethos intrudes upon the rosy future that had seemed mapped out. From this point on, the cabaret becomes a place of extreme moral ambiguity. The Emcee says that it is a place where life is beautiful—in other words, a place where one can forget the outside world. Yet when that outside world is enabling the rise of the Nazi Party, those who seek to ignore reality entirely and continue having a good time are, in part, responsible for the evil that follows. In one abstract moment, the Emcee stands in for the child who has broken Herr Schulz’s shop window; in another, he signs “I don’t care” with devilish indifference. The cabaret and the Emcee come to represent the complacent masses who facilitate evil by carrying on regardless.
Naturally, the songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb are excellent, several of which will be familiar even to those who do not know Cabaret well: the title song, certainly, as well as “Money Makes the World Go Round.” It is the cast, however, who keep this well-known, long-revived show feeling fresh.
Eva Noblezada is a marvellous talent. She plays Sally with a posh British accent—something like an It-girl (remember those?) fallen on hard times, with a touch of Ab-Fab—and ably balances the spontaneity, vulnerability, and hauteur the role requires. However, it is her singing, and her ability to imbue the songs with potent, gradually revealed emotion, that truly sets her apart. She does not merely sing the songs; she acts them, with complete conviction. “Maybe This Time,” sung as her relationship with Cliff threatens to become real, begins quietly enough and builds to a lacerating crescendo that mixes hopefulness, disbelief, and all the pain and heartache of someone who has had their finer feelings trampled on and discarded a thousand times before. The title song, “Cabaret,” may be even more powerful. Sung once the rise of the Nazis can no longer be ignored, Noblezada builds herself up into such a frenzy, in her desperation to keep the beautiful dream of the Cabaret going despite all that is happening in the world outside, that she claps jerkily and spins like a wind-up toy gone out of control, her voice choked with emotion as she tries to convince herself that “Life is a cabaret old chum.” This is no light evening at the theatre.
Among the rest of the cast, Bakar Mukasa is affecting as Clifford Bradshaw, the calm centre of the show pulled into Sally’s damaging orbit. Joe Atkinson, who stood in for Reeve Carney, manages to be both seedily seductive and quietly destructive as the Emcee. He has presence and timing and holds the show together. Lucas Koch, as Ernst Ludwig, Cliff’s friend, does fine, subtle work; his warmth and likeability leave the audience genuinely stunned when his character’s dubious political affiliations are revealed. It is this feeling of disbelief that gives the second half of the show much of its weight.
Cabaret remains a great show: entertaining and, by its close, genuinely unsettling. With its immersive staging and an outstanding cast—led by a deeply felt, emotionally layered central performance—it forces its audience to confront not only the rise of extremism, but the dangerous ease with which one can look away.
Noblezada’s run as Sally Bowles ends on 24th January 2026. Come to the cabaret before she takes her final bow.
