In the Springs, the classic naughty musical is on now at the Ent Center.

A big show that uses creative staging delivers in Cabaret for Theatreworks’ 50^th anniversary season opener in Colorado Springs. The well-sung and superbly acted musical runs through Oct. 12 at the Ent Center for the Arts at UCCS.

Cabaret dazzles with its music, tone and provocative storyline. But what makes the show are the characters, their costumes, their decadence and allure.

Tight, multi-tiered staging brings the gender-bending action up close and personal. Some audience members are even seated at intimate, dimly lit tables as patrons in the fictitious Berlin Kit Kat Club in early 1930s. It’s unsettling times as the Nazis are rising to power, but a troupe of misfits seek escape into an underground world of debauchery and moral ambiguity.

Miranda McCauley and Ben Griffin as Sally and Cliff in ‘Cabaret.’ | Photo: Isaiah Downing

A risqué tale

Loosen your collar and hike your skirt, the party is on. As the club’s dancers engage in risqué antics, serious romances flourish and wither amid the turbulence.

At its core of the story are English cabaret performer Sally Bowles (Miranda McCauley) and American writer Cliff Bradshaw (Ben Griffin). The unlikely pair are as passionate as they are disconnected. They share soaring highs and familiar heartache as they navigate love that gets stuck in mere lust.

Making her debut at Theatreworks, McCauley is a Colorado Springs native who earned a BFA from Belmont University. Her vocal talents and dance moves resonate with credits including Young Frankenstein, Carrie, Legally Blonde and Godspell. As Cabaret’s Sally, she is brash and callous as her circumstances dictate, while tender (but opportunistic) when needed.

Her onstage chemistry with Griffin (Bradshaw) is off, but maybe that’s the point. These two are not meant to last. Another newcomer to Theatreworks, Griffin nails the idealistic writer as the shy nerd — but one who has acted on his “curiosities” before arriving in Berlin. Theatreworks interpretation of his character is muted and intriguing. Griffin has appeared at the Denver Center Theatre Company (Twelfth Night) and played the title role in Shakespeare in Love with Vintage Theatre.

Still, no one upstages the musical’s Emcee. Even Liza Minnelli, in the 1972 Oscar award-winning film, shared the spotlight with Joel Grey in this delicious part. Colorado Springs-based actor, props artisan and drag artist Sammy Gleason embraces the role with ease. His glittered red lips sparkle as he glides the stage in blatantly provocative moves that may rattle some patrons. Gleason is the story’s sagacious narrator that binds the fictional tale to the harsh realities of Nazism in a Berlin that will soon change for decades to come.

The ensemble | Photo: Isaiah Downing

A quieter romance

While Sally and Cliff are none too subtle in their tryst, a quieter romance is evolving. Fräulein Schneider (Sally Lewis Hybl), the owner of the boarding house where Cliff and Sally live, is smitten with Herr Schultz (Colin Alexander), a Jewish fruit vendor. Hybl and Alexander are magically in love. Both capture the accented dialect with authenticity, peppered with familiar German. These two fine actors slow-cook a credible love, but not without some drag to the play’s progression as their sweet but tragic tale unfolds.

Sally’s compatriots at the Kit Kat Club are a cross-section of seedy societal rejects. Anna Michele Lincoln projects sheer trash in her portrayal of Fraulein Fritzie Kost as she parades her lovers pridefully. (An arts educator by day, she will return to the Fine Arts Center in Colorado Springs this holiday season for Mary Poppins.)

Appearing as Victor, Anders Arneson wears ripped hose and garters with apparent joy. Dancer Lulu (Tracy Nicole Taylor) prances with poetic grace in her skanked-out scenes. A familiar face on local stages, she was the pious Sister Mary Robert in FAC’s recent Sister Act.

With colorful names and backstories, the show’s ensemble actors play multiple roles and genders half clad in tights and skirts and sometimes little else. The choreography in the dance number “Mein Herr,” complete with whips, is hilarious. Shirts off to costume designer Sarah Beth Parks with spot-on garb. What fun this show must have been to outfit!

The fictional story within the musical stays true to history. Little do the sorry souls in the Kit Kat Club know their party is about over as Hitler’s totalitarian regime gives rise to the Nazi party. Cabaret is fanciful and fun, filled to the brim with the outrageous but underpinned by a history we can only hope is not repeating itself.