The Third Reich rises as Weimar Berlin falls in this affecting musical

Cabaret

, a provocative musical

set in a seedy nightclub in Weimar Germany, is the sort of thing that can be painful to witness if done badly. Depravity drained of subtlety and wit is a bore, and, when coupled with bad German accents, hellish. At first, a recent performance at the Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre appeared headed down that road. Scantily clad dancers from the musical’s Kit Kat Club circulated through the audience. Their flirtatious interactions—”Vell, hellooo handsome”—were meant to evoke the atmosphere of an actual cabaret. But when a baby-faced, just postpubescent boy rolls his hips right in front of you and throws his head back in mock sexual ecstasy, it’s neither titillating nor funny. It’s just disturbing.

Still, the younger cast members can’t help their age, and once the audience participation segment of the program ended, things began to look up. The magnetic Tim Elliott took the stage in the guise of the emcee. He and the dancers broke into “Wilkommen,” the catchy trilingual ditty that has been in this reviewer’s head ever since. What followed was a tight, well-choreographed, beautifully sung production that, while here and there as gawky as some of its cast, fulfilled the thought-provoking potential of the 1960s classic.

Cabaret

is set in 1931 Berlin, just as the Nazis are coming to power. The Kit Kat Club is a den of devil-may-care iniquity where pretty much anything goes. A romance blossoms between Sally Bowles (Lynn McCormick), a British party girl who performs at the club, and Cliff Bradshaw (Aaron Dalton), an American writer who has come to Berlin in search of inspiration. Instead he finds himself drawn into a decadent nightlife where sexual dalliances of all varieties are accepted as a matter of course and the growth of the Nazi movement is seen as beside the point. “It’s only politics,” Sally says, “and what’s that got to do with us?” A subplot tracing the doomed romance between Cliff’s landlady, Fräulein Schneider, and a Jewish tenant, Herr Schultz, eventually provides the answer. As the Nazis begin to encroach on the characters’ personal lives, the cabaret increasingly becomes an escape from reality, and the escapades of its denizens begin to take on a note of desperation.

Elliott is the show’s standout. He has a creepy

Clockwork Orange

allure-slash-menace, befitting a character who serves as the all-knowing, slightly malicious narrator. His shaved head and glittery lipstick—a different color in every scene—make for an arresting look (though one does wish he’d button his pants). Elliott’s performance has a coy distance, a tongue-in-cheek appeal that stands in contrast to the writhing of some of the dancers, who too often seem to have come straight from a pole-dancing seminar.

McCormick gives a spunky, bawdy performance. She manages to emphasize Sally’s fun-loving persona while revealing glimpses of her underlying insecurity and lack of hope. McCormick’s best scene comes at the end, when she reprises “Cabaret,” a song with joyful lyrics that at this point in the story ring hollow. She begins singing hesitantly, the peacock feather in her hair drooping and her hands nervously twitching. But by the end of the song she is once again exuberant and larger than life, having convinced herself—if not the audience—that life is indeed a cabaret, old chum.

The supporting characters are largely good, especially Todd Krickler as Ernst Ludwig, Cliff’s lovable, back-slapping friend who turns out to be a Nazi. The set is minimal, allowing for many changes, and the music is serviceable, if a bit tinny. (Electronic drums and a synthesizer just can’t compete with the brassy fullness of the music in an actual cabaret, though the live band is a nice touch.) Choreographer Melissa McGinley has crammed a large cast onto a small stage, on top of crafting a performance in the round. The result is well-rehearsed and impressive.

Spotlighters has pulled off a demanding musical. The rise of the Nazis comes on subtle and chilling, like a storm approaching. Near the end of the first act, Jeff Coleman, as a Nazi guard, delivers a haunting rendition of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” the musical’s swelling, benighted Nazi anthem. It at once reveals the promise of the movement—what drew people in—while reminding the audience of the evil that promise wrought in the years that followed.

We’ll endure a little adolescent carnality for something that powerful.