principles of difference that we have been finding at the heart
of the genre.
Political Drama: Cabaretand Pacific Overtures
Let us be specific. Here are two examples of musicals that
open the political implications of the musical to view. They
are not from the 1930s, when in fact there were a number of
explicitly political musicals (The Cradle Will Rock, Pins and
Needles), but from a later time, when the political determina-
tion of the 1930s might be supposed to have drained away
from Broadway. They are Cabaret(1966) and Pacific Overtures
(1976), both chosen because they have proved to be revivable
shows and because they mark out the political turn that can
be given to the conventions we have found to be basic to the
musical.
Cabaretis one of the explicitly Brechtian musicals. It looks
back to the Brecht/Weill Three Penny Operaand it is a version
of Christopher Isherwood’s account of the rise of Nazism in
Berlin Stories. The conclusion of the musical is what interests
me here, for it uses the convention of reprising an earlier num-
ber to bring about a strange duet between two characters who
never interact earlier in the plot. Then, after a reprise of another
song, a large mirror swings into position so that the audience
may gaze upon itself. (The mirror was part of Hal Prince’s
staging of the original production, but it is used often in other
stagings.) The reprises and the mirror combine to give the mu-
sical an explicitly political conclusion.
The final scene shows Cliff on a train, leaving Berlin. Know-
ing that Sally Bowles has decided to stay and that this episode
in his life is over, he begins to write his “Berlin Stories.” They
will be rather like the source upon which the musical we have
just seen is based, Isherwood’s Berlin Stories. “There was a
cabaret and there was a master of ceremonies and there was a
city called Berlin in a country called Germany—and it was the
end of the world and I was dancing with Sally Bowles—and we