The "Cabaret" Compendium

It's the hottest show in Portland. We tell you why -- and a whole lot more.

First, our review:

At the opening of his much-anticipated production of "Cabaret," Portland Center Stage artistic director Chris Coleman had just one question: "How many of you are Storm fans?"

That a clear majority of the audience members began cheering indicates how much the presence of statuesque singer Storm Large means to the prospects of this show, which opens Center Stage's second season in the Gerding Theater at the Armory. Beloved locally for an outsize persona cultivated with her band Storm and the Balls and celebrated nationally for her run last year on the reality TV contest "Rockstar: Supernova," she's a key to the company's crossover dreams, a bright lure to fans outside the regular theater-going crowd.

Storm fans hoping their rocker hero is up to a new challenge? Musical theater aficionados nervous about an iconic role being given to a celebrity neophyte? You all can breathe easy: She more than holds her own amid a cast of talented stage veterans, giving the character of wayward nightclub singer Sally Bowles a coquettish physical allure, a potent mix of sweetness and opportunism, and a credible enough British accent. As far as the singing goes, the only problem is that Sally is supposed to be a performer of middling talent, and Storm's burnished tone and charisma make it easy to overlook that.

What Storm's performance won't do is make you overlook the rest of this darkly glittering production, which is based not on the innovative Broadway original nor the Oscar-winning film version but the more skin-baring and sexually suggestive late '90s revival directed by Sam Mendes. It presents Weimar-era Berlin as a sort of giddy three-ring circus of sleaze, where the pursuit of pleasure reflects the very desperation it is trying to outrun.

The metaphorical key to the show is the Emcee, played by the ever-captivating Wade McCollum like a cat with a mouse tail peeking out of his mouth. Sliding down a pole, singing the introductory "Willkommen" here as more soft seduction than celebration, the Emcee presides over the Kit Kat Klub's seedy frolics and beckons us into its bubble of oblivious eroticism.



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