You can come to Berlin for anything. My partner and I have obeyed Liza Minnelli. We have come to the Cabaret.
Cabaret is a Berlin cliché we couldn’t resist. It’s been nearly 65 years since literary legend Christopher Isherwood introduced us to Sally Bowles; almost 40 years since Liza won an Oscar for playing her, admonishing us to toss life’s cares aside and come to Berlin’s anything goes, hedonistic party scene. Amazingly, Berlin still has its own long-standing love affair with the genre we call cabaret—Berliners call it varieté.
“A toast to the Queen—if she had balls, she’d be King!” The crowd snickers, the Emcee holding each of us perfectly in the palm of her hand, switching briefly from German to a joke in English. The show at Berlin’s elegant Wintergarten does a bang-up job creating the atmosphere of Berlin in the 20s: an evening of old-fashioned variety. It’s not as nasty, hedonistic, or politically-driven as we might hope—all those elements do exist in other venues, but you’d need to speak German to really experience them. Our evening of varieté may not be nasty, but it is rich.
Insanely talented Emcee Meret Becker doesn’t attempt to channel Joel Grey or Alan Cumming—the sell-out, mostly German crowd isn’t here for that. Instead she tells her own jokes and sings her own songs in German, with occasional English tidbits to satisfy non-German guests. True to the genre, the Emcee introduces us to a zany and crazy-talented cast of acrobats, singers, jugglers, even a French magician. Aside from seeing a full tango performed on a trapeze, most of the acts aren’t new—many of us have seen duos of muscular strong-men holding each other in impossible positions, and other cirque-style acts—but the presentation is fresh
The crowd drinks, eats (a full dinner menu is offered), laughs, relaxes. Late in the show the Emcee melts us with a sultry La Vie en Rose, accompanied by a man playing crystal glasses, and her encore gives us Cabaret tune Mein Herr—a perfect send-off into the Berlin night.
Berlin’s “Cabaret” experience for travelers:
Wintergarten Theatre is near the Schöneberg neighbourhood—the place to see is the building at Nollendorf Straße No. 17 where Isherwood lived. A plaque marks the spot, giving nod to both the author and Cabaret, but the apartments are private. You can, however, stay in a place that evokes Isherwood’s era. A few blocks away we check in at Hotel Askanischer Hof. Passing through a grand marble entryway and climbing a curving flight of stairs we enter a time warp. It’s essentially an old rooming house surrounding a courtyard, with a front desk where matter-of-fact staff provide clunky, old-fashioned room keys. Our room has far more than “one narrow bed,” indeed it’s got loads of space, 15-foot ceilings, a crystal chandelier, and two beds which become a king (typical in Germany).
For a perfect Saturday we wander the surrounding streets of the former West Berlin, exploring a shrine to history—the sobering shell of Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, bombed during WWII—and a shrine to German resilience and capitalism: the KaDeWe department store which features an entire floor of globally imported foods, and a 7th-floor buffet with sublime views of the city through a massive arc of glass. At nearby Winterfeldtmarkt, a weekly outdoor market, we join hundreds of Berliners browsing an astonishing variety of breads, cheeses, produce (Herr Schulz’ fruit stand comes to mind), art, clothing, and prepared foods. A late lunch of Berlin’s classic fast-food “currywurst & frites” with a hearty bowl of sausage & potato soup makes the day perfection.
After a few days indulging in the nostalgia of “Cabaret” Berlin our flight lifts off for home. We look down at Berlin from the Lufthansa 737 window. Over the roar of the jet engines we can still hear the music play. We’ve been to the cabaret. And we’ll be back for an encore.
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CABARET INFORMATION
Wintergarten Varieté, Potsdamer 96, tel. +49 30 588 43 40, www.wintergarten-variete.de. The show changes every few months in order to attract a return crowd of locals.
WHERE TO STAY
Hotel Askanischer Hof, Kurfürstendamm 53, tel. +49 30 881 80 33, www.askanischer-hof.de
WHERE TO EAT
KaDeWe Buffet and International Food Floor, 7th Floor, Tauentzien Straße 21-24, www.kadewe.de
Imbiss Currywurst & Frite Stand, Winterfeldtmarkt. Winterfeldtplatz, Schöneberg, http://winterfeldtplatz.corbida.de
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