I am a Camera

It is inarguable that John Van Druten's 1951 play, "I am a Camera", based on Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories has been rendered wholly superfluous by the musical "Cabaret."  I wish this weren't the case and would like to maintain the opposite, affording the allure of the exotic to a theater work that no one is likely to see so as to, therefore, contradict my assertions.  But, in fact, "I am a Camera" is dated, insufferably coy, and far inferior to the musical adapted from this material.  Inevitably, the audience watches the show ticking off differences between the play and "Cabaret".  It's an exercise in "compare and contrast" with all comparisons, more or less, invidious to the 1951 play.  A young Englishman has come to Berlin to write; he proclaims that he is merely a "camera" and, therefore, a technical instrument indifferent to the spectacle around him.  He supports himself by giving English lessons and, impoverished, rents his flat to a vivacious would-be courtesan, Sally Bowles.  The young woman sings in a Berlin cabaret, although the play gives no evidence of this trade beyond its mere mention.  Sally has an affair with a caddish German, gets pregnant, and with the help of the cheerful, slatternly landlady, procures an abortion.  She is courted by boorish American millionaire and, even, offered a round-the-world trip by the man before he abruptly, and inexplicably, decamps.  The Nazis start beating up Jews in the street and the hitherto apolitical Christopher defends one of his pupils, the prim and judgmental daughter of a Jewish department store magnate.  An aspiring gigolo who has concealed the fact that he is Jewish falls in love with department store heiress and reveals his true religion to her.  Sally's mother appears to retrieve her daughter and Christopher and the young woman pretend to be engaged.  Sally makes a curiously ineffective, if rhetorically charged, speech about Christopher choosing to become engaged in the street-fighting on behalf of the oppressed Jews.  It seems that the figure of the mother is entirely contrived and imported into the play in order to provide Sally with a sounding-board for this declamation.  After the mother leaves, Christopher departs Berlin himself, Sally remaining behind.  Christopher says something like:  "So there really isn't an ending (referring to his book and the play as well)...Sally just goes on and on..."  And with that observation, the curtain falls.  The dramatic arc of the play is something like "Casablanca" or any number of American films made between 1937 and 1942 -- an apolitical, hedonistic young man, at first, resists commitment, but, then, chooses to become engaged in the struggle against Fascism.  This theme had a certain timeliness when Michael Curtiz made "Casablanca", but has become trite by 1951 -- it's not hard to be anti-Nazi six years after the end of World War Two.  Presumably, the play's subject matter was thought to be risqué and daring in the early fifties -- abortion is treated sympathetically, objectively, and without moral disapprobation in the first half of the play.  The playwright disguises, or, at least, is maddeningly coy about Christopher's sexual orientation -- he is never shown to be homosexual and the basis for his chastity with the allegedly promiscuous Sally seems inexplicable:  she never makes a pass at him and he never suggests intimacy with her.  Sally's character is ambiguous:  she postures as a world-weary courtesan, an experienced geisha of the Berlin demi-monde,  but the movie suggests that this is mostly play-acting and that she is, in fact, rather naïve, romantic, and not as decadent and sexually sophisticated as she pretends to be.  (When her mother arrives, Sally becomes docile and obedient to the vigorous and, indeed, rather bawdy older woman.)  The plot involving the American millionaire is incomprehensible.  If I recall correctly, the movie-musical (the movie is different fromf the Broadway show as well) adapted this narrative strand into an excursion involving a sexually ambiguous German aristocrat who is revealed to have designs on both Sally and Christopher ("Brian" in the film.)  "Cabaret" ingeniously advanced the action and provided a Brechtian commentary on the proceedings with its excellent musical numbers -- for examples, "Two Ladies" commenting on Sally and Christopher's relationship and the ménage a trois with the aristocrat and "If you could see her" on the subject of the ethnic prejudice and romance.  The audience experiences the absence of this sort of musical commentary as a serious deficit in the play.  The play is a variant on the kind of coming of age plot that was old when Hal consorted with Falstaff in Henry IV, Part One.   A subject for scholarly consideration is the relationship between Truman Capote's Holly Golightly in "Breakfast at Tiffany" and Sally Bowles in this 1951 play -- in both cases, the heroine is young, somewhat naïve, romantic, and purports to be sexually promiscuous; both works involve a closeted gay man who serves as the young woman's confidante.  "Breakfast at Tiffany's" lacks the politically fraught context of "I am a Camera," but, in reality, the political situation is used a bit meretriciously in the play -- it is essentially a plot device to import into the theater piece a specious speech about Christopher's political engagement (echoing in a remote way Sartre's then-fashionable notion about the necessary of the artist being politically engaged); the Nazi plot element also drives the love affair between the crypto-Jewish gigolo and the bourgeois store-owner's daughter.  But there isn't anything intrinsically political about "I am a Camera", the politics is ladled over a plot that is essentially identical to much of Capote's short, and brilliantly written 1958 novella. "I am a Camera", not hamstrung by comparisons with "Cabaret" in 1951, was a big Broadway hit and its ingénue star, Julie Harris, won a Tony award for her performance.  I saw the play at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater on June 26, 2014 as a preview -- it is part of a tribute to Julie Harris, a benefactor of the theater; the actress died in 2013.  The show is certainly pleasant enough and the first act captures the audience with its wit and interesting characters; as the "messages" accumulate in the second half, however, the show loses focus, seems to be too long, and, ultimately, feels a little pointless -- the subplot involving Sally Bowles' mother paralyzes the action.  The actors were excellent.  There was no stage-craft to speak of -- the show is performed on a single set.  The music deployed didn't sound anything like cabaret-tunes from the late twenties and, so, seemed completely inappropriate -- but I sensed that the director wanted to avoid anything that would force comparison, inevitable in any event, with the Bob Fosse musical.  The lead role was played by an African-American actor who was excellent, debonair, and elegant in his speech -- but this sort of color-blind casting is a mistake, I think, in a theater-piece involving Nazis and Fascism.  People's ethnic and religious background matters intensely in this play and, therefore, it is distracting for Sally and her mother, both white and English, to discuss how Sally's father will react to her alleged fiancée, Christopher.  (Presumably, in 1933, the father will be concerned that the nice young man is Black.)  In general, the performance were good; the play falters but this is intrinsic to the script.