Stage : ‘Cabaret Verboten’: Return to the Weimar Republic

Of all the ancillary pieces inspired by the presence of the Degenerate Art exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, one of the best and briefest opened at the Itchey Foot Ristorante over the weekend as part of the Mark Taper Forum’s Literary Cabaret.

“Cabaret Verboten,” with its four oddly trussed-up performers, its tainted tone, its eerie-descence, scornful lyrics and rousing German music drips in Weimar Republic decadence. The leader of the group (Roger Rees), with wild eyes and a two-day growth of beard, looks like a refugee from Hell. His buddy, Heimlich (Paul Kreppel), in dapper checkered suit, exudes the trustworthiness of a numbers runner. But it’s the women who take the prize: sexy Una (Bebe Neuwirth) in filmy states of undress and marching boots--and her “best friend,” Shahtsie (Harriet Leider), a firebrand from another planet drowning in triple chins, lipstick the color of unhealthy blood and streaks of menacing mascara.

Who are these mutants? Direct descendants from the pen of George Grosz, furtive night creatures casting sidelong glances at an audience they can’t decide they want to swindle or take into their confidence. It is this hovering ambiguity that “Verboten” mastermind Jeremy Lawrence and his accomplices (Peter Jelavich, John Willett, Lawrence Selenick, director Steven Albrezzi and musical stager Charles Randolph-Wright) have managed to achieve. In a corrosive hour and 20 minutes, accompanied by a piano-player named Sturm (musical director/arranger Nathan Birnbaum) and a percussionist named Drang (Richard Martines), they engage us in a montage of authentic sketches from the heyday of German cabaret--ranging from bawdy to grotesque and silly to satirical.

It’s absurd to compare sketches, but with the exception of a bit of nonsense called “The Love Letter,” the collection is outstanding. Each item has its own derisive, gender-bending, political or ironic twist and all performers are superb. Of special note: Rees in Kurt Weill’s “Seashells from Margate,” Kreppel in “The Stock Market Song,” both in “The Snag” (or how proposals go awry) and “The Tailor Fragment” (or how to get fitted out for Nazism). Watch for Leider in the mocking “The Jews Are All to Blame” (sung hilariously to the strains of Bizet’s “Carmen”) and Leider and Neuwirth in the exceptional, self-reviling “Shag Tobacco” and “When the Special Girl-Friend.”

The sketches are an education in masterful double-entendre, illuminating a unique aspect of abject art in revolt and ending on a mindfully chilling note.