It’s something every parent wants to shield their children from, something we all fear despite knowing it’s not real, the thing that goes yuck in the night: Eddie Redmayne as the Emcee in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. Normally, there are societal guardrails in place to protect us all from such things; namely, the ticket prices are so exorbitant that no average person will ever have to worry about being exposed to it. This is freak shit for rich creeps who want this sort of thing.
First of all, it’s not your fault. I want you to take a deep breath and really internalize that. Nothing could have prevented this from happening.
On Sunday night’s Tony Awards broadcast, the Best Revival of a Musical–nominated production of the so-good-and-classic-it’s-honestly-hard-to-fuck-it-up-this-bad Kander and Ebb show staged a performance of its opening number, “Willkommen,” without so much as a trigger warning. Redmayne’s portrayal of the role made iconic by Joel Grey is scary in all the wrong ways. The Emcee should definitely be a menacing, uncanny figure, but he’s also actually supposed to lure the audience in for the show’s knife twists to work. This song is an invitation and an induction. The Emcee must have a degree of charm, or sex appeal, or feeling of camaraderie, so that you get that gut-sinking feeling of complicity as the fascism closes in.
But Redmayne is repulsive and confusing, igniting a fight-or-flight response in thousands of innocent viewers who did nothing to deserve this. Looking like a waxy Five Nights at Freddy’s malfunctioning animatronic stripped of its fuzzy bulk and coated in a taut layer of borrowed human skin, he is shot in extreme close-up as he makes direct eye contact through the television screen into your living room. He can see you. He can eat your thoughts. If given the choice between Redmayne and Samara, I would try my luck with Samara. Having watched this, I am not convinced I won’t die in seven days.
And then there is the voice, which many have compared to Kermit the Frog, which is such a mean thing to say … to Kermit the Frog. Redmayne’s milk-curdled timbre and Dexter’s Lab accent simply do not make for an endurable listening experience.
Then the rest of the cast pops into frame, jump-scare style, with their spoooooky dancing and scaaaaary makeup, and at least we have other focal points on the screen for a minute. Gayle Rankin comes in screaming from the audience where she spins co-star Bebe Neuwirth around (don’t bring Bebe into this). It’s a tiny respite until we’re back to the stage, and suddenly Eddie Redmayne is scampering around on all fours, weaving through the ensemble’s legs like some albino cockroach.
To those defending the performance, saying it’s unsubtle because it’s meant for a live theater and not TV, and furthermore, it’s taken out of context: I have seen this performance in its context at the August Wilson Theatre. It is just as frightening because he is there in the room with you.
To those saying that American audiences simply don’t understand the dark and grotesque themes that Redmayne & Co. are getting at (this production is a London import): au contraire, mon cher. These themes are made very clear in the book and score of this musical; it’s just that other productions and performers trust audiences to figure it out for themselves, whereas this team thinks they need to spoon-feed and scream the “banality of evil” messaging at you. By holding audience members’ hands and guiding them through upsetting material encased in the enticing, friendly form of a musical, this production is far less radical than it thinks.
Plus, the role is supposed to be queer, and the Kit Kat Klub (the real, provocative spelling, you cowards) can totally at times be grotesque. But here we have a straight thespian seeming to make the queerness, in itself, grotesque.
Eddie Redmayne may very well be a nice man. He always looks kind in fan interactions posted online. He just happens to make capital-D Decisions that are often weird and bad. This might just might be the weirdest of all, if not the worst (hello, Danish Girl). But you don’t even need all these arguments and justifications to be haunted by this terrible creation. Maybe this is how you do things over in “London,” wherever that is, but ’round these parts, we like our Emcees to be good at singing and to maybe not look like they’re making fun of people with scoliosis. It’s all deeply unsettling, and I’m sorry you had to go through that. You’re allowed to feel scared and confused. That is valid. If you or your loved ones have been exposed to Eddie Redmayne’s Tony Awards performance, you may not be entitled to compensation, but know that you’re not alone. There’s more of us than there are of him.
