Small Is Beautiful : Ojai Art Center Theatre’s ‘Cabaret’ overcomes limitations of size and financing with enthusiasm and clever spending.

Sometimes, bigger isn’t better.

A major, professional production of “Cabaret” held in Oxnard earlier this year is followed only a few months later by a relatively small, under-financed and amateur production by the Ojai Art Center Theatre.

Two productions of the same play only a few communities and four months apart would generally be one too many. But there’s much to recommend in the current Ojai presentation.

In this case, enthusiasm of the cast and crew helps a lot, and the cleverly spent low budget actually helps create an air of tackiness in the Kit Kat Klub, its patrons and performers.

The play itself, with more emphasis on the script (and less on the songs) than many popular musicals, doesn’t need any help at all. The menace of Hitler’s increasing popularity is palpable here, especially when certain characters whip out their swastika armbands for the first time.

David Douglas stars as Clifford Bradshaw, the American would-be novelist seeking inspiration in (barely) pre-Nazi Berlin. Juli Cuccia is Sally Bowles, the expatriate English singer who seduces Bradshaw in the Kit Kat Klub, one of the lowest rungs of Berlin night life. Neil Evangelista is the Klub’s all-seeing and cynical Emcee.

Evangelista plays his character without heavy makeup and adds his own touch by playing some appropriately out-of-tune saxophone along with the authentically shabby onstage band.

Cuccia, at one point, drinks a raw egg. Now, that’s devoting one’s all to Art!

Mysterious businessman Ernst Ludwig and boardinghouse owner Fraulein Schneider are played by a real-life couple, David and Beverly Rose Gidlow. Fraulein Schneider’s fiance, the shy Jewish fruit dealer Herr Schultz, is played by John L. Haag. Debby Winsberg is Fraulein Kost, a one-woman support force for the German navy who lives across the hall from Bradshaw.

Elmer Bladow designed the functional sets, and the costumes are credited to Adele Perrault and Dennis Mullican.

Choreographer Jackie Warner Ringhof supplied some clever steps. Especially notable are two of the Emcee’s specialty numbers, “Two Girls” and “If You Could See Her.”

The entire enterprise was pulled together with great flair by director Evelyn Raft and her husband, producer Jack Raft. The play was, of course, written by Joe Masteroff, with music and lyrics by Paul Kander and Fred Ebb. All involved have much to be proud of.

* WHERE AND WHEN

“Cabaret” plays Friday and Saturday nights through Nov. 30 at the Ojai Center for the Arts Theatre, 113 S. Montgomery St. in Ojai. Performances are at 8 p.m. on Saturdays, and there is one remaining Sunday matinee, 2 p.m. Nov. 24. Reserved seats for all performances are $10, with a $2 discount for seniors, children and Arts Center members--but, please, leave young children at home! For reservations, which are recommended, or further information, call 646-0117.