Put down the knitting, the book and the broom, Coming this May, it’s Contact Theatre’s Cabaret

May 8

By Darragh Kilkenny-Mondoux
May 8, 2025

The co-founders and cohort of Contact Theatre return to the Monument National in May to bring us Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret.

*Left: Mairead Rynne as the Emcee, Right: Julie d’Entremont as Sally Bowles, Cabaret by Contact Theatre, photo by Matthew Sandoval.*

In this cast are several memorable faces from their 2024 production of Spring Awakening, including META-nominated actress (and florist) Julie d'Entremont as Sally Bowles, and Mairead Rynne as the Emcee. Mairead was a standout performer as ill-fated Moritz in last year’s production, so returning audiences are sure to enjoy seeing them shine centre stage in Cabaret.

Last year, we spoke to Debbie and Ally, Contact Theatre co-founders, about the design approach to Spring Awakening which imagined a regressive sex-negative not-too-distant future, rather than evoking its specific historical period. The company will explore the themes and political realities of Cabaret, however, as a period piece, our recent conversation revealed that it is no less unnervingly immediate.

Mairead speaks to their approach to playing the iconic Emcee, stepping into a character played by giants of stage and screen… most often by sometimes queer, sometimes Jewish cisgendered men. When asked about what the queer legacy of the Weimar-era this production wants to bring its audiences back to, Mairead smiles, saying, “There’s a lot of joy to be found in exploring queerness in the context of the history. There's this idea sometimes that this expression of queerness is a new phenomenon, or a more modern phenomenon, but you go back and you are able to explore these characters in these performances.” When asked if the gender-queer qualities of the Emcee in particular feel close to our own era, or rather timeless, she is pensive before replying, “I think in some ways, it's both: it’s the queerness of the whole piece, but particularly the Emcee's role. I think the importance and the expression of that queerness in the period which the piece is originally set in, as well as in a modern context, is the demonstration of that queer joy across time periods. That feels very important to me. Throughout the piece, that's something that I've been focusing on a lot.”

Those familiar with the piece will know, a liberal and liberated joy roars from the Kit Kat Club in the first few numbers of Cabaret. Women dance, joke, and make their own money, love and sex are anything but heteronormative, and there’s nothing too sacred to joke about. None of this, of course, is apolitical, whether today or a hundred years ago.

Dark times befall the Kit Kat Club, clockwise from left: Michelle Laliberté as Frenchie, Santiago Montejo as Hans, Momo Burns-Lin as Lulu, Courtney Crawford as Texas, and Julie d’Entremont as Sally, photo by Matthew Sandoval.

Mairead has a grand selection of solo numbers, so when I ask her if there is a song that has revealed deeper meaning or struck her ear in a moving way since they’ve begun rehearsals, it’s a juicy one. If You Could See Her bears the musical's most cutting closing line, one which, in recent and current productions, other Emcees have seen audiences react to in troubling ways. “In the Emcee speech at the end of If You Could See Her, which is “Why can't the world just leben und leben lassen— Live and let live?” I think that line kind of digs deep into a frustration that I think a lot of people are feeling with those in power, with those with money,” she explains.

Director and choreographer Debbie Friedman tells me a song that stays with her beyond the rehearsal room is Money. “The lyric ‘but when hunger comes a rat-tat-tat-tat at the window, see how love flies out the door’ That got to me. It's very easy to judge–and I'm not humanizing what happened back then–but at the same time, when you think about the extremes of poverty that were happening, and you think about the straits that people were in, it's easy to understand how someone can prey on desperation and turn it into hatred. And I think that's a really important message of the show.”

In conversation with Mairead and Debbie, they both speak of this piece with a conscientiousness of the enduring kinship between queer identities and Jewish identities. The joyful resistance to marginalization under fascism, and the shared language of musical theatre to channel this joy, and this history.

“I think it's that shared otherness that does happen for a lot of marginalized communities. For me, with this show, I think that musical theater is something that has been so important in the queer community, that has been so important in the Jewish Community, and both communities have always found a lot of shared themes that are important in different times over different moments in history. For me, at least I think musical theater is kind of a shared space for these two communities.” - Debbie Friedman, director & choreographer

The way other(ed) communities and cultures resonate with Jewish themes and histories is a beautiful byproduct of musical theatre, as with a successful run of Fiddler on the Roof that made a big impression in Japan. Debbie notes that Kander & Ebb are both queer Jewish men, and when producing Cabaret in 2025, it’s worth noting that they were Americans, staging a subtle creep away from a free and fun-loving society towards a nationalist over-policed public life. The pessimist and optimist can agree that this production is timely.

Patrons willing to pay a premium can experience Mairead Rynne’s turn as the Kit Kat Club’s Master of Ceremonies in a space along the stage reserved for “exclusive, immersive interactions with Cabaret performers” and “a signature Kit Kat Klub cocktail or mocktail.” Running from Friday, May 16 to Saturday, May 24 at Studio Hydro-Quebec at the Monument National, Contact Theatre invites us all to be transported to a bygone era, and then swiftly reminded of the trials and triumphs of our present one.