Top #13 TONY Award Countdown - Cabaret!

WAKE UP BROADWAY FANS! It’s time once again for another installment of New York Broadway Tours Top 30 Tony Awards countdown playing you the best of the Great White Way from the past telecasts over the last 70 years. We are 13 days away from Broadway’s Biggest Night!!!!

At # 13 today, we take a trip to an iconic night club in Berlin where the only thing you leave your troubles at the door. All during World War II during the Nazi’s rise to power. That iconic club is course THE KIT KAT CLUB from?Kander & Ebb‘s Cabaret the Musical. It was also written by Joe Masteroff?and featured the iconic choreography of Bob Fosse.

From the 1998 telecast, Alan Cumming and the cast of that year’s?Roundabout Theatre Company revival perform the show’s WILLKOMMEN.

CABARET premiered in 1966 at Broadway’s Broadhurst Theatre starring?Joel Grey as the Emcee and later transferred twice to the Imperial and the Broadhurst Theatre where it played a total of 1,186 performances. It was nominated for 11 Tony Awards in 1977 winning 8 including Best Musical and Best Performance By A Featured Actor in A Musical (for Grey). Grey would later reprise his performance of the Emcee for the iconic 1972 film that won 8 Academy Awards (including winning his very own as well). CABARET would later be revived 3 times on Broadway…. In 1987 where it returned to the Imperial Theatre starring Grey AGAIN reprising the role of the Emcee playing a total of 261 performances. That first revival was nominated for 3 Tony Awards including Best Revival of a Musical but lost all of it’s categories. In 1998, a new production (that came from London’s?Donmar Warehouse) was produced by Roundabout Theatre company playing Broadway’s Henry Miller’s Theatre (currently the Stephen Sondheim Theatre) before moving to Studio 54 starring Alan Cumming (and later Ra?l E. Esparza, Neil Patrick Harris, Adam Pascal, Jon Secada, Norbert Leo Butz, and John Stamos) as the Emcee playing a total of 2,377-performances. The production was well known for it’s intimacy look including setting the Theatre look like as if the Kit Kat Club actually excited with table seating. In addition, the entire cast also served as the orchestra playing the entire score LIVE (no pit). It was nominated for 10 Tony Awards that very same year winning 4 including Best Revival of a Musical and Best Leading Actor in a Musical (for Cumming). The most recent revival happened in 2014 when Roundabout Theatre Company brought back the Tony winning production once again back into Broadway’s Studio 54 and featured Alan Cumming reprising his performance of the Emcee playing a total of 423 performances. It was nominated for 2 Tony Awards for Best Featured Actor and Actress in A Musical (for Danny Burstein (who is nominated again this year) and Linda Emond) but lost all of it’s categories. The acclaimed Roundabout Theatre Company revival is still touring America right now with Randy Harrison as the Emcee.