I loved this commentary on the Cabaret number on the Tony's. From Vulture:
On Sunday night?s Tony Awards broadcast, the Best Revival of a
Musical?nominated production of the
so-good-and-classic-it?s-honestly-hard-to-fuck-it-up-this-bad Kander and
Ebb show staged a performance of its opening number, ?Willkommen,? without
so much as a trigger warning. Redmayne?s portrayal of the role made iconic
by Joel Grey is scary in all the wrong ways. The Emcee should definitely be
a menacing, uncanny figure, but he?s also actually supposed to *lure the
audience in *for the show?s knife twists to work. This song is an
invitation and an induction. The Emcee must have a degree of charm, or sex
appeal, or feeling of camaraderie, so that you get that gut-sinking feeling
of complicity as the fascism closes in.
But Redmayne is repulsive and confusing, igniting a fight-or-flight
response in thousands of innocent viewers who did nothing to deserve this.
Looking like a waxy *Five Nights at Freddy?s *malfunctioning animatronic
stripped of its fuzzy bulk and coated in a taut layer of borrowed human
skin, he is shot in extreme close-up as he makes direct eye contact through
the television screen into your living room. He can see you. He can eat
your thoughts.
