Mo Shipley, Raven Whitley, Brandon Ruiter, Molly Herández, and Terry Bell Photo by Michael Brosilow

In theory, the play follows the stories of three rough groupings of characters. Marthe Müller has escaped Cologne and the marriage her respectable and economically comfortable parents would like to arrange for her. On her way to Berlin, she crosses paths with Kurt Severing, a journalist whose ability to work and sanity are crumbling along with the economic and political situation in the city. At art school, Marthe meets Anna Lenke, a masculine-presenting fellow student, and when it turns out that she has no particular interest in pursuing the kind of art the school teaches, Marthe oscillates between relationships with the two. She also takes a walk on the wild side of the sex, drugs and jazz the city has to offer under the tutelage of Kurt's former lover, Margarethe.

The other two groupings regrettably receive less attention here. Kid Hogan is a Black jazz coronet player from the southern U.S. who falls in love "at first sound" with the singer Pola Mosse. Representing the everyday people who are suffering most acutely under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles are Gudrun Braun, her husband the shell-shocked Otto, and her young daughter Silvia, as well as the Communist activist Otto Schmidt and the twelve-year-old, self-described Jew, Communist (at least at the paperboy level), and Houdini fan, David Schwartz.

If the plot of the focal group of characters sounds eerily like an amalgam of the stage and film versions of Cabaret, this certainly seems intentional. Indeed, Court is participating in a screening of the film during the show's run. If the B-team characters seem like a conscious update of Isherwood (and Kander and Ebb), complete with nods to Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, well, it seems likely that neither Lutes nor Maher would shy away from acknowledging this. And yet, these stories are far from landing the human, emotional beats their inspirations do.

Marthe, for all her love of jazz and well-founded resistance to the roles prescribed for her as a privileged woman, is largely unsympathetic. She drifts from Kurt to Anna and back again, vacillating between being oblivious to the fact that she is a "kept woman" to angry about it to ultimately leaving Berlin on principle (but also because her dabbling in social unacceptability may have finally put her in real danger). And perhaps most importantly, Marthe's narcissistic reaction to Anna's immobilizing depression after her assigned sex at birth is brutally revealed in a raid on a club the two are frequenting makes it difficult to retain perspective on the fact that Marthe herself is engaged in a gender struggle that has much lower stakes in this particular historical moment.

In a similar vein, it is challenging to maintain a connection with Kurt as, on the one hand, he is incandescently frustrated with the privileged creatives of Berlin as they dance and screw their way through the conflagration, but on the other, he is naive enough to be casually certain that his editor's case for treason will be dismissed. Add into this that he is not so much hostile to the exhortations of his acquaintance (if not friend) Otto Schmidt to join with the workers (read: Communists) as he simply is too wrapped up in his own petty, bourgeois concerns to be bothered.

There are interesting veins to be tapped in all these stories. There's genuine humanity and complex, conflicting values and positions, but whether the disappointment is rooted in the source material or the adaptation, this never quite gets there.

All of this is not to say that there are not artistic triumphs here, or that the show is not worth seeing. John Culbert's scenic design is stark and gorgeous, with its arcade of pitch-black arches, and the stage's main footprint, which suggests a sewer grate, but also a storm swirling beneath the characters' feet. Add to this Keith Parham's lighting, which floods the senses with red, horizontal bars to mimic panels from the graphic novel and sears the retinas with blinding white light, demanding that the audience confront both the past and the present. Jacqueline Firkins' costuming is wonderful for Anna, for Margarethe and Pola, and for Kid, as well as for Gudrun, but the costuming for both Marthe and Kurt is static, and when ensemble members need to shift into other personas (as they need to do with great frequency), there isn't always visual support that the audience can easily follow.

Mark Messing's sound design is oppressive, alienating, and inviting in exactly the right proportions. His compositions, when the production features them, are overwhelming and effectively oppressive. But here again, the adaption is disjointed in ways that don't always seem intentional. The variations on Brahms' lullaby are exquisite and touching; Pola's songs (and the songs of other characters played by the same actor, whether or not she is supposed to be Pola in those moments) are often rousing and effective. But then, very late in the second act, there is an isolated musical theatre number about queerness and freedom that is problematically detached from the rest of the show.

For all the frustrations that emerge from the text, though, the production is a well-executed feat. The near constant motion speaks to Newell's expert direction and the rapport that the cast achieves under it. The sore thumb musical number does not negate the soundscape the cast creates on the stage, and there many things here that are a pleasure to experience.

As Marthe and Kurt, Raven Whitley and Tim Decker embrace the undisguised flaws of their characters. As unlikeable and unsympathetic as the character of Marthe is, Whitley is unafraid of her fatal flaws, and manages to find moments of connection with the audience. Although Severing is a series of contradictions, Tim Decker inhabits and gives life to a man who is unnervingly prescient in some ways and privileged to the point of being oblivious in others.

Mo Shipley is exceptional as Anna. Many an actor has had to play their character with integrity even as the choices available to them within the text afford them little to work with. Shipley plays Anna with a wonderfully human mixture of awkwardness and bravery. They particularly shine in a conversation with Marthe, late in the play, about what the latter has completely failed to understand about Anna's gender presentation (and gender identity). Much to Shipley's credit, their performance never surrenders to what could have easily become the all-too-familiar tragic queer character vibe.

In a similar vein, Kate Collins is tremendous as Margarethe. In some ways, the play seems to insist that it is considering the ascent of the Nazis not as some out of the blue evil, but in light of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles. In reality, though, there's really only a single scene that even briefly captures the humiliation of Germany after the first world war, as Margarethe insists on telling a part of her own story. Here, in demanding attention for this story, Collins (who deftly sells many of the clever, throw-way humorous elements of the play) lends much-needed context and depth to the play overall.

In the tantalizing roles that unfortunately don't receive much attention, Terry Bell is devastatingly charismatic as Kid Hogan, and he translates that charisma into a believable, grounded story arc where he is deeply reluctant to leave the city that has afforded him a place within the music he loves. Bell is also excellent as Severing's naive (and doomed) editor, who is bound for prison on treason charge. Bell also displays his acting chops as Goebbels, though there's disappointingly little capitalization on this as there's never any interaction between this performance (from Bell's role in the ensemble) and that of the ensemble member who eventually transforms to play Hitler.

It's Elizabeth Laidlaw who is called upon to do this, after her maternal/worker character of Gudrun Braun is gunned down in the course of a May Day political action. Laidlaw is excellent as Gudrun, who personifies what the author/adaptor (presumably) wants the audience to identify with: a woman trying to keep her family above water. She eventually stumbles into ambivalent involvement with the Communist activists. After Gudrun winds up among the dead in a May Day protest, she rises to embody Hitler for the rest of the play.

It's an odd dramatic move that has its effective moments, thanks to Laidlaw, but what the adaptation hopes to accomplish through the casting is not always clear. At times, he begs Marthe to draw him as he is, not as history depicts him. At others, he reminds the audience of the wider history that is unfolding around the characters. And at still others, he seems to exist primarily as a winking nod to Cabaret's Emcee.

As young David Schwartz, Jack Doherty does a wonderful job capturing the particular hell of coming of age against this backdrop. Without clumsily playing at being twelve, Doherty imbues the character with all the necessary awkwardness of a not-quite teenager and threads throughout the performance glimpses of the brave man the character will be. As Silvia, Ellie Duffy's most engaging moments are in her interactions with David.

Molly Hernández has a powerful, gorgeous voice as Pola, and her movement work alongside Bell is critical to the moments in which the show really captures the energy of Berlin. Guy Van Swearingen is a grounding presence as Otto Schmidt, the would-be leader of the Communist movement, and does well as David's father, although that double casting is especially difficult to keep track of. At this performance, Christopher Meister filled in for HB Ward as Otto Braun, Gudrun's damaged husband who succumbs to the Nazis' rhetoric and becomes a more active participant in the violence than any other character. Meister does a more than commendable job communicating the character's anguish, even though the irregular inclusion of the character in the fabric of the story undermines the actor's efforts.

Berlin has been extended through May 18, 2025, at Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis, Chicago IL. For tickets and information, please visit CourtTheatre.org or call 773-753-4472.