Performer + Role: Joel Grey in Cabaret

Here's a link to a video of Joel Grey in Cabaret performing "If You Could See Her Through My Eyes"--a great combination of the charming, the ridiculous, and (in the final punch line) the disturbing. The film, based on a Broadway musical, is set in Weimar Germany--the same era in which Brecht wrote Man Equals Man--and it borrows the performance styles of the era.

Like a Brechtian clown, Grey's EmCee does not have a realistic "character" with clear psychological motives; he is a performer who functions wholly within the world of the cabaret, and here he is "playing" a man who is in love with a gorilla. The line between performer (EmCee) and role (man in love with gorilla) is not entirely clear, and neither is the performer's attitude towards that role.

The potentially Brechtian result is that the audience cannot be sure whether this performance is anti-Semitic or a critique of anti-Semitic attitudes. They must wrestle with irony and ideological uncertainty, perhaps thinking about the issue in a new way.

"O Moon of Alabama"

Near the end of Scene 8, Galy Gay sings the refrain "O Moon of Alabama," which comes from “Alabama Song” by Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, made famous in the opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930).

The opera is set in Wild West America, and characters include Alaskan Lumberjacks and an enterprising fugitive from justice named Leocadia Begbick. A whore named Jenny Smith sings “Alabama Song” as she leaves home to pursue "whiskey, dollars and pretty boys." You can hear Teresa Stratas sing the operatic version in this clip from a 1978 Metropolitan Opera production.

Brecht wrote the lyrics in English, and the song has been covered by American and British artists, including Nina Simone, The Doors, and David Bowie.

This article from Opera News contains an excellent analysis of the song, the opera, and the subversive impact of the Brecht-Weill musical style.