TER assembled a stellar cast for this lush, comprehensive studio recording and the result is a dazzling array of jewels. If there is one drawback, it’s that the whole thing is so highly polished and John Owen Edwards’s musical direction of some of Kander’s finest music so slick that the acrid, seedy aftertaste and uncomfortable sense of complicity which the best productions of Cabaret have bestowed on their audience are necessarily muted. However, when even the chorus boasts performers of the calibre of Louise Gold, Claire Moore and Jacqueline Dankworth, the sacrifice is almost worthwhile. Overseen by Jonathan Pryce’s satanically whooping M. C. (less simian than Joel Grey’s in the 1966 original), the proceedings unravel with uneasy familiarity. The gathering swell of “Tomorrow belongs to me” (John Mark Ainsley in fine voice) remains among the most blood-chilling moments in musical theatre.
Thirty years after creating the role of Sally Bowles in the West End, Judi Dench graduates to playing Fraulein Schneider with dignified resignation in the face of the circumstances which deny her a final chance of happiness (“What would you do?”). Neither she nor lyricist Fred Ebb, enterprisingly invited to play Herr Schultz, are great singers, but the eloquence of the emotion in their duets is beautifully touching. Sally Bowles is essentially a naive, second-rate cabaret singer whose ambition exceeds her natural ability, flaunting a thin veneer of decadence which is ultimately pathetic. Past interpretations have ranged from brittle huskiness (Dench) to doe-eyed vulnerability (Liza Minnelli in the 1972 film). Here, Maria Friedman’s performance, vocally superb apart from a strained version of the Minnelli standard “Maybe this time” included in the bonus tracks, is a model of self-interest and single-minded determination, immune to the massing forces of darkness which are feeding on the political indifference of her kind. '