Cabaret is a Broadway portrait of Berlin, the glamorously decadent society, about to fall into the grip of Hitler's naked power.
It's rarely performed by amateur groups but Walmsley Church AODS have tackled it with real imagination.
Red neon lights flash overhead and the customers of the Kit Kat Club sit at tables on a specially added thrust stage. The show's numerous scene changes are neatly managed so that we switch from cramped railway compartment to night club, and from fruit shop to bed sitting room, with scarcely a moment's pause.
Producer Audrey H. McL. Raistrick's main achievement is to capture the show's sense of poisonous gaiety. She's helped by a beautifully bi-sexual, hip-swinging performance by Graham Edgington as the cream-faced Master Of Ceremonies.
The Nazis' coming to power is signalled by a sweet little Landler song: Tomorrow Belongs To Me which builds up later in the show to a powerful ensemble, sung by a whole roomful of people to bring the curtain down on the first half.
It's a marvellous way to suggest how brutal politics can begin to capture the hearts and minds of perfectly ordinary, loving people.
Irene Taylor gives a nicely extraverted account of Sally Bowles, an affectionate young flapper desperately learning to fly. Mike Taylor gives a real "good guy" portrait as the young novelist who can't even complete chapter one, and Norma Pollitt gets to the heart of the warm, good natured Frau Schneider.
The show has a rewarding musical score put over to good effect under musical director Jessie Whittaker.
