‘It’s 60-year-old boy meets 60-year-old-girl’: Steven Skybell on his Tony-nominated turn in ‘Cabaret’
Steven Skybell as Herr Schultz and Bebe Neuwirth as Fraulein Schneider in Rebecca Frecknell’s revival of “Cabaret” at the August Wilson Theatre. Photo by Marc Brenner
Amid the glitz and glamor of the August Wilson Theater’s immersive new Cabaret production, actor Steven Skybell has a more subdued look. Dressed in a neat topcoat and neckerchief, his character Herr Schultz is the sole Jewish person in this iconic musical depicting Berlin’s slide into Nazism — “a bit of a token Jew,” Skybell notes.
In a play filled with doomed characters, Schultz is the most doomed of all. He’s also the most optimistic. A mild-mannered fruit vendor who lives in the same boarding house as the story’s American protagonist, the aspiring novelist Clifford Bradshaw, Schultz believes that the rising tide of fascism and antisemitism will pass. “I understand the Germans,” he says to Cliff near the end of the show. “After all, what am I? A German.”
While Cliff is pursued by Kit Kat Club performer Sally Bowles, Schultz has a whirlwind romance of his own with boarding house owner Fraulein Schneider. Schneider is not Jewish, but at first neither seem concerned by this detail. “I think that goes far in putting Schneider and Schultz in the hearts of the audience,” Skybell says, “because the audience knows something that these two characters don’t.”
Skybell is by now experienced at portraying this kind of tragic naivety. While he’s a veteran actor of film, TV and stage, his most-lauded role was quite recent, as Tevye in the Yiddish-language production of Fiddler on the Roof. The show was an unexpected hit that ran from 2018-23, and will return for a seven-week run this year at the off-Broadway New World Stages.
“The circumstances of Anatevka can’t even comprehend or imagine the final solution of Nazi Germany,” Skybell says. “That is, I think it’s a misstep to think that by being kicked out of Anatevka, they feel like one day the world will try to wipe out their whole race from the earth. I think they can’t even imagine that horror, that is actually just a whisper around Herr Schultz’s shoulder.”
I spoke with Skybell, nominated for a Tony for his performance, about what makes this production unique, his newfound love of playing Jewish characters and the lessons we can take from Cabaret. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I was quite moved by your portrayal of Herr Schultz. Since opening night, what’s your experience been like?
It’s been amazing. From the very first performance, it’s been like a perfect storm — in terms of material, Eddie Redmayne leading the company, and the excitement. So many people have a relationship with Cabaret, so from the very first moment of the evening, it’s like a rock concert. The audience just goes crazy for it.
My character of Herr Schultz isn’t really one of the cabaret performers. But to get to contribute by really grounding the story and adding such tragedy and pathos to it is so rewarding.
What was your relationship to Cabaret before joining the production?
Interestingly enough, before I started rehearsals, I’m embarrassed to say I had never seen a stage production of Cabaret. So in some ways, I didn’t know the fine tunings of the story. And if you know the film, it’s sad to say Herr Schultz is not in the original film. I came to it knowing it only really from the music, not from the incredible book that Joe Masteroff wrote. In that regard I feel like I came to it pretty fresh, and I don’t think that was necessarily a deficit for me.
One of the things about the production that struck me was how immersive it was — they really brought the Kit Kat Club to life.
The prologue to the whole experience works a certain alchemy that probably no one can truly quantify. These incredible prologue performers who are setting the mood for the evening and really giving life to the Kit Kat Club contribute to that first moment of what we call the scripted play. When the audience just goes berserk for Eddie, I think they’ve been prepared by the whole immersive quality.
The creatives have gone so far to absolutely disorient everyone to make them feel that they are in the Kit Kat Club. So much so that even the marquee doesn’t say Cabaret — it says Kit Kat Club. I love that. People I know who have seen the show speak of that immersive quality as something kind of so unique and unusual and exciting. No one has really said you know, “why?” Everyone just sort of embraces it.
In terms of playing Herr Schultz, when we first started rehearsing I was a little nervous because I thought, “How will the scenes set in the boarding house feel complete if it’s been made so clear that this is the Kit Kat Club?”
But [set and costume designer] Tom Scott said something brilliant to me: Because of the deep brown wood of the central playing area, and the columns that sort of surround it, we very easily just translate that Kit Kat Club stage to the boarding house. You can really see the boarding house just as well as you can see the Kit Kat Club.
Even though the main story takes place between Sally and Cliff, the subplot of Herr Schultz and Fraulein Schneider is kind of what the whole plot hinges on. What do you take away from their relationship?
Cliff and Sally seems like a more modern relationship, but the thing I love about Herr Schultz and Fraulein Schneider is that it’s a conventional love story — boy meets girl, but the twist is that 60-year-old boy meets 60-year-old-girl. It’s a love story about two people, maybe from different worlds, who find each other and want to try and make a life together. I think that is something that grabs the audience. It’s a love story they can absolutely root for and not have any kind of qualms about, “Well, what is this kind of relationship?”
And then obviously, because it’s set in Berlin in 1929 and 1930, it just touches upon the entire outcome of the Jewish population from the Second World War and the Holocaust without hitting it over your head.
There’s quite a lot of World War II historical fiction, but comparatively little set in the Weimar period. What do you think is the importance of looking back to pre-war Germany?
Well, one character says it to Cliff early on in the play: This is Berlin! Which is to say, there’s freedom here, there’s exploration here. There was a flowering of culture during the Weimar Republic, and to have gone from that to fascism and the Nazi regime is obviously frightening.
And then the other thing for Cabaret being done in 2024, it is strangely parallel to the America we see around us. Even just from a Jewish point of view, as a Jewish boy growing up in the 1970s in a small Texas town, I still felt the flowering of Jewish acceptance. I never felt antisemitism growing up in a small Texas town. It seemed to me from that point of view that the Jewish struggle had reached a certain glory day here in America — the land of opportunity, the land of equality.
Now in 2024, we see that that is not even a given. Nothing stays put like that. The journey we see in Cabaret from the Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany, as horrific and impossible as it seems, can also be seen as a cautionary tale about not letting things happen by due course.
You recently played Tevye in the Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof. What parallels do you see between these two plays? At this point in your career, are you gravitating towards more Jewish roles?
When I was a younger actor, I would be cast with a wider swath. Someone of my looks would be called ‘exotic’ or, you know, ‘ethnic.’ The first film role I ever played was a young Catholic priest.
Now, for better for worse — and I do think in some ways, it can be for better — we want authenticity in the casting. Finding myself playing the Yiddish Tevye was a happy accident for me. What I didn’t realize is that I would then become more strongly identified as a Jewish actor. And I revel in that. I love it.
It’s not that I would say no to anything else, but as I’ve said in the past: if all I ever played for the rest of my life were Jewish characters, that would be absolutely fine by me. I really feel it’s a little bit of a calling. Not that a non-Jewish person couldn’t play Herr Schulz, or couldn’t play Tevye. But I know from my own experience as an actor that so much can be drawn from me [in these roles]. And I revel in that — some of the work is done for me just because of who I am.
To answer your question, Herr Schultz is much more of an assimilated Jew than Tevye is. When we first started rehearsals on Cabaret, I talked to the director about it, like: “Don’t we want to sprinkle in a little more Yiddish?” But discussing it with her, she felt that’s the point: He’s a cultural Jew more than a religious Jew. And yet we can assume he is going to get swept under by the Nazi regime regime, regardless of his assimilation into German society. So in that regard, he and Tevye are pretty far apart in some ways.
During “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” there are these strange dolls wearing suits that rotate the stage. What do you see as the significance of those dolls, and of the suits that the whole cast eventually changes into?
As I understand it, this is the whole journey of Cabaret. At the beginning of the evening, the Emcee introduces every single Kit Kat by name: Rosie, Helga, Lou Lou, Texas. So in some ways, the journey of our production is from unique individuality that in the rise of fascism is going to become more monolithic and cookie cutter.
When we first see those effigies, that is the first time we hear the song “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” which is sort of the anthem of the future of Germany. I think by the end, we see the practical utilization that we all have become those dolls.
There’s a bit of judgment of the patriarchy at the end. That everyone ends up in suits as opposed to dresses, men and women alike, to me that’s meaningful and part of our story. At the end, Sally even sings “Cabaret” in a suit.
You used the term “rock concert” before. This production definitely leans into that glamorous aesthetic. In a show that deals with such intense political subjects, it’s an unusual combination.
I think it’s a hallmark of the creatives, Kander and Ebb. Just like with Chicago, they don’t shy away from difficult, strange, violent subject matter. And yet they’re able to infuse it with such melody and song and toe-tapping dancing. It cross-circuits in terms of pleasure and fear and loathing. Even while the music is so exciting, it’s also a little grotesque, a little dirty.
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