Welcome, bienvenue, welcome / Stranger, étranger, stranger / Nice that you're here / Je suis enchanté! / Happy to see you … – sings the emcee and seduces his guests into the seedy underworld of the Kit Kat Club. It's the 1920s in Berlin. A time marked by extreme poverty and uninhibited enjoyment, in which one sells one's own body for a bit of joie de vivre.

Here the American writer Clifford Bradshaw falls in love with the singer Sally Bowles. She is the acclaimed star of the show and dreams of a career as an actress. Clifford makes ends meet as an English teacher and writes a novel. When Sally becomes unemployed, she moves in with the young writer. They become a couple and plan a future together. Clifford's landlady, Fraulein Schneider, is also newly in love. She would like to marry the Jewish greengrocer Schulz. But the onset of fascist terror quickly shattered private dreams. Nazi henchmen destroy the vegetable shop.

Miss Schneider distances herself from her marriage plans. Clifford's friend, the currency smuggler Ernst Ludwig, turns out to be a henchman of the brown violence. Faced with political danger, Clifford wants to leave Germany with Sally. But she decides on her career and stays in Berlin. The musical Cabaret tells of love in the Roaring Twenties and of its failure in the face of the National Socialists' seizure of power. Cabaret is based on the autobiographical stories of the British-American writer Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986).

Attracted by the reputation and sexual promiscuity of the city of Berlin, Isherwood had come to Germany in 1929 after dropping out of medical school to write a major Berlin novel. He published his experiences from this period in the book Good bye to Berlin (1939). In 1933 he emigrated to California, where he worked as a screenwriter. In the 1950s he became an icon of the gay and lesbian movement because he was one of the first prominent authors to come out about his homosexuality.

Stage Direction Calixto Bieito Musical Direction Nicholas Kok Choreography Juanjo Arqués Musical Dramaturgy Barbora Horákova Joly Set Design Calixto Bieito, Helen Stichlmeir Costume Design Paula Klein Light Design Rüdiger Benz Choreographic Assistant Daura Hernandez Garcia Dramaturgy Ingoh Brux