Theater Nazis, Gay Love, Willkommen! by D.L. Groover

The publicity photos for The Country Playhouse’s production of Cabaret got my attention—two men kissing, Kit Kat boys, a greasy emcee in suspenders and short pants, and a cross-dressing orchestra. This was a production of the classic Kander/Ebb musical I wanted to know more about.

My curiosity took me out to the netherland intersection of Beltway 8 and I-10, to Town & Country Village, where I discovered Houston’s most unfamiliar theater company and its uncompromising vision of Weimar Germany’s dissolution.

“Nobody knows we’re here,” said Nancy Meikle, publicity and marketing director for Country Playhouse, “short of setting fire to the building and running around naked to see if we could get anybody’s attention. I’ll get 20 to 30 questionnaires each show that say this is the first time I’ve been here.”
Country Playhouse started in 1956, making it older than either the Alley or Stages. The company was housed in a barn when cows roamed along Westheimer, and Beltway 8 wasn’t even a dream. The Country Playhouse moved into its present location at 12802 Queensbury 22 years ago and has since been surrounded by Town and Country Village mall. CP has been a regional staple in presenting a who’s who of theater for those outside the Loop. Past shows include the Houston premiere productions of M Butterfly and Master Class, Hair, The Philadelphia Story, Gypsy, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Born Yesterday, and Man of La Mancha. Beginning with Cabaret, this season’s repertory runs from Kaufman and Hart’s screwball classic The Man Who Came to Dinner, Samuel Taylor’s romantic fairytale Sabrina Fair, Tennessee Williams’s hothouse A Streetcar Named Desire, and Ira Levin’schilling crypto-gay Deathtrap.

This year, the company received its nonprofit 501(c)(3) designation. Its large Cerwinske Stage theater seats an impressive 250; its smaller Black Box is reserved for more avant-garde fare such as their sold-out shows Agatha Christie Does Dallas and A One-Sided Conversation with Casey Stengel. There are acting classes led by Barbara Lasater, and a renowned summer theater camp program for kids. The Country Playhouse provides a whole world of theater to the west of downtown.

“We don’t know why,” Meikle said, “but for some unknown reason, we were granted the privilege of doing Cabaret while it’s still on Broadway. Generally, those rights are never handed out to anybody, let alone a small regional theater.”

CP’s production, directed and choreographed by Christopher Ayres with musical direction by Claudia Dyle, is modeled on Sam Mendes’s lurid 1993 London smash-hit recension, transplanted later to NYC’s Studio 54, where it’s still playing. Mendes, artistic director of London’s cutting-edge Dunmar Warehouse and Oscar-winning director of American Beauty and the recent release Road to Perdition, set the Kander/Ebb musical inside the seedy Berlin nightclub, played up leading man Cliff’s bisexuality, added songs from Bob Fosse’s film, and overlaid the entire production with Weimar decadence and sexy grunge.

Cabaret is director/choreographer Christopher Aryes’s 10th show for CP, and if the first full run-through that I witnessed was any indication, he is clearly in his element.

“The Kit Kat boys was kind of hinted at in the ’88 revival,” said Ayres. “They also hinted at Cliff’s bisexuality. The movie makes a mention of it, but in the original production because of the time when it was written, they really had to shove that way, way under, but when they did the London version at the Dunmar, they played up the fact that Cliff was bisexual, and the male waiters became performers, the Kit Kat Boys.

“In the research that I did, Berlin in the ’30s, prior to the Nazi takeover, was actually more hedonistic and wilder than even Paris. Paris had cornered the market, so Berlin had to top whatever was being done. If what we are doing on stage seems wild, believe me it is nothing compared to what was really going on there at the time. The show really has a pansexual energy. You’ve got men with men, women with women, men with women. They’re all over each other.”

Though worried about her patrons’ reactions to such steamy goings-on, Meikle’s irrepressible love is for the theater and putting on the best show possible. “I like family theater, I have to admit, and I’m hesitant when we start ripping off our clothes and running across the stage, but we’re just following the direction and instruction from the book we got when we got the rights,” she said.

“The nice thing about working here has been [that] not once has anyone really tried to tie my hands, and say you can’t do this,” said Ayres. “There have been concerns and arched eyebrows, but when push comes to shove, the board really does stand behind its directors.
“It’s been a wonderful ride, because this has been the first show I’ve ever done anywhere when we have had no diva fits, no egos, no attitude. The company genuinely gets along with each other and loves being together. One of the girls walked in today and said, ‘What a horrible weekend; I’m so glad to be back with these people I love.’ How many shows have I not heard that before!”

When directing, Ayres wears a whistle around his neck.
“I don’t believe in yelling at people. Where there’s tension, there’s no creativity. Dancers and singers are infamous for being chatty. Rather than scream at them, I just blow the whistle. They get quiet, and then I can talk to them like civilized human beings. Some people dread it and some people like it, but it works. It’s a trick I picked up from a Fosse bio.”

During the run-through, he doesn’t blow his whistle once. At one point, he quipped: “If musical theater would be any easier, it would be called football.”