The actors will replace Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin as the Emcee and Sally Bowles, respectively
Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club is about to say "Willkommen" to two new stars.
Adam Lambert and Auli'i Cravalho will each make their Broadway debuts this September in the Tony Award-winning revival of the beloved Kander and Ebb musical, now open at the August Wilson Theatre in New York City.
The actors and singers will star in the roles of Emcee and Sally Bowles, respectively. They'll replace Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin, both of whom received Tony nominations for originating the roles in the Rebecca Frecknall-directed production, which transferred after debuting in London's West End in 2021.
Redmayne, 42, and Rankin, 34, will play their final performance in Cabaret on Saturday, Sept. 14.
Lambert, 42, and Cravalho, 23, will begin in the show on Sept. 16. They're scheduled to play a limited engagement through Sunday, March 30, 2025.
Casting for their replacements after March 30 will be announced in the new year.
Related: George Clooney, Denzel Washington, Robert Downey Jr. and All the Stars Heading to Broadway
Both Lambert and Cravalho have had stage experience before, though not on the Great White Way.
"Growing up on the musical theater stage, it was always a childhood dream to perform on Broadway," said Lambert — who, prior to gaining national attention as the runner-up on season 8 of American Idol, was an ensemble member and Fiyero understudy in the North American touring production of Wicked. "With this production of Cabaret, it finally felt like the right time to accept an invitation to make my debut."
"The themes of this show have always resonated with me and given the current sociopolitical climate the world is in, feel eerily timely," he continued. "Eddie and Gayle have been a dream pairing and I’m looking forward to working with Auli’i to create our own magic. It is thrilling to be able to sink my teeth into this important story and collaborate with the rest of the talented artists in the cast and crew."
Last July, Cravalho performed the title role of Evita in West End concert performances of the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice musical.In February 2022, she starred opposite Stephanie J. Block in the Kennedy Center's production of another Webber musical: Sunset Boulevard.
"I’m thrilled to join the long line of talented women who have taken on the iconic Sally Bowles, most recently, the woman I watched with notebook and pen in hand, the dynamite Gayle Rankin," the actress said in a statement. "To join a show with so much history — and such a stellar cast and crew — means it’s quite literally an honor to get my butt kicked each week."
"Mahalo palena ʻole family," she added. "I wouldn’t be making this debut without you."
Related: Eddie Redmayne Admits He Lives ‘Like a Monk’ Despite Playing Emcee in Cabaret’s ‘Hedonistic’ World
Cravalho rose to fame as the voice of the title character of Disney’s Moana, a role she'll return to later this year in the highly anticipated sequel. She's had additional film and TV credits in The Power on Amazon, Hulu’s Crush, the NBC drama Rise, Netflix’s All Together Now and as Janis in the film adaptation of Tina Fey’s Broadway hit Mean Girls: The Musical.
Lambert has had a successful solo career in music, earning a Grammy nomination for "Whataya Want from Me", off his debut 2009 album. Four LPs have followed over the years as we as a solo EP — the "hedonistic and unfiltered" dance-driven project Afters, released just last week.
The singer has also toured the world as the frontman of Queen. Their album together, Live Around the World, debuted at No. 1 in October 2020.
Among his many film and TV credits are roles in Glee, the Oscar-winning film Bohemian Rhapsody and the Sofia Coppola-produced feature Fairyland.
Cabaret at the Kit Kat Clubis based on John Van Druten’s 1951 playI Am a Camera, which in turn was adapted from the 1939 novelGoodbye to Berlinby Christopher Isherwood. Itfollows fictional American writer Clifford Bradshaw as he moves to Berlin amid the rise of the Nazi party. His observations about the eccentric characters that populate the Kit Kat Club, like the mysterious Emcee and the British singer Sally Bowles, provide the groundwork for both the musical and his future novel.
The musical has long been a success both on the stage and screen,first hitting Broadway in 1966. before being turned into the 1972 film of the same name starring Oscar-winnerLiza Minnellias Sally. It was revived on Broadway in 1998 and in 2014, both with Alan Cumming as the Emcee.
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A score, by Kander & Ebb, is made up of a string of songs that have become musical theater mainstays, like “Willkommen,” “Don't Tell Mamma,” “Mein Herr,” “Two Ladies,” “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” “Money,” “Maybe This Time” and, of course, “Cabaret.”
TicketsforCabaret at the Kit Kat Club are on sale now.
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