Dark Shadows : Dachau Visit Provided the Impetus for Grim, Revised ‘Cabaret’ in Brea

With all the commemorations marking the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, director Gary Krinke and producer Mary Engwall see this as an appropriate year for their theater company’s revival of “Cabaret,” which begins a four-week run today at the Curtis Theatre. But timing isn’t their only reason for staging this musical about social decay in Berlin during Hitler’s rise to power.

Their primary motive has to do with a trip Krinke took to Germany, a trip that started out as a lighthearted excursion but took a startling turn.

Krinke, who is chairman of the theater department at Fullerton College, was leading an international study program in Paris several years ago when he decided to take his students to Munich for a weekend of Oktoberfest revelry. Knowing it would be hard to find lodging in the crowded German city, he and the students got off the train about 10 miles from their destination and checked into a bed-and-breakfast.

What Krinke didn’t realize--until he opened the shutters and curtains in his room--was that they had arrived in Dachau. And the horrific view from his windows was of the Nazi concentration camp where untold numbers of Jews and other prisoners had been slaughtered.

“That day was probably the most sobering experience of my life,” recalls Krinke, who says he never will forget walking through the notorious camp and hearing the sobs of men and women who had come to see where their loved ones had died.

“There are so many thoughts raging through your head,” Krinke says. “Why didn’t somebody stop this?”

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Those memories were with him when he and Engwall chose “Cabaret” as the second project for their Prism Productions theater company, which made its debut last fall with a production of the counterculture musical “Hair,” also at the 199-seat Curtis Theatre.

They point out that they are doing the revised, 1987 version of “Cabaret.” The original opened on Broadway in 1966; a film version with Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey was released in 1972.

“The revision has a lot of strength to it,” says Krinke, emphasizing that it is darker and more complicated than many people realize. “It’s definitely not the movie. If people are coming to see that, it’s quite a change.”

To set the tone for people as soon as they enter the theater, Krinke and Engwall have arranged for photographs from the holocaust to be displayed in the lobby. The somber images were donated by the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles to the Orange County Bureau of Jewish Education in Costa Mesa.

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Costumes also will reflect the dark mood. The provocative Kit Kat Klub dancers and all the other cabaret denizens will be dressed in black, white and various shades of gray, contrasting sharply with the only bright color onstage: the red of Nazi swastikas.

Krinke and Engwall say their goal is to give adult and teen-age audiences a new perspective on “Cabaret” and its dramatization of the economic and social conditions that gave rise to fascism.

“I will never give up on educating the public,” Krinke says. “For me, the minute I open the script, I see those ovens.”

* “Cabaret” by Fred Ebb and John Kander opens tonight at 8 at the Curtis Theatre, 1 Civic Center Circle, Brea. $7 to $15. Continues Saturday, Sunday and Thursdays through Sundays through Oct. 8. (714) 990-7722.