LA FEMME NATASHA

Vanities

NATASHA RICHARDSON as Cabaret's Sally Bowles? What kooky, counterintuitive casting. After all. Christopher Isherwood's most enduring creation was a gamine stray, a bohemian she-cat bobbing on a sea of lumpy mattresses, whereas Richardson, a lofty, tawny creature of bearing and breeding, comes from a pride of lions. (She is also wed to the powerful head and loins of Liam Neeson.) Onstage, the actress has risen to full assurance, receiving awards for her Broadway debut in the title role of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie and acclaim in a West End production of High Society. Starring in Cabaret, which opens next month at Club Expo. Richardson will be braving a strong head wind. Not only is the image of Li/a Minnelli in the movie version imprinted on everyone's memory, but the musical's decadence seems almost innocent now Berlin Boogie Nights. However, the Roundabout Theatre Company production, in which the theater itself w ill serve as the Kit Kat Klub. offers the prospect of a slinky, kinky neon immediacy that banishes all traces of nostalgia. With a Sally Bowles who really knows how to wrap herself around a chair.

JAMES WOLCOTT

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