What Do the Kander/Ebb Muscial Cabaret and Canada's "Human Rights" Mausoleum Have in Common?

Well, there is this: while Cabaret, a musical reworking of a novel by Christopher Isherwood, is a tuneful romp through a decadent Weimar Germany that is soon to give way to the horrors of Nazism, the mausoleum is a chamber of horrors that fetishizes victimhood and that serves to highlight the decadence of "human rights" in our time.

But I'm pretty sure that's not what this chap, a theatre guy in Winnipeg, site of the soon-to-open mausoleum, had in mind when he said this:

The linchpin of his season is a revival of Cabaret, the timeless classic that will soon be returning to Broadway in a production featuring movie stars Michelle Williams and Alan Cumming. It is set in a seedy Berlin nightclub at a time when Hitler's power in Germany is taking hold. The run is a nod to next season's opening of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. 

"It's a phenomenal musical," Schipper said. "The question it asks is, 'What would you do?' The point it makes is that all it takes for evil to occur is for good people to do nothing."

No, sir. The point it makes is that some people--say, like, Sally Bowles--are reckless hedonists who love to wallow in decadence, and who could care less about evil.

Another point: the ill-conceived, colossally expensive "human rights" edifice is a monumental mistake which, unlike perennial fave Cabaret, is bound to be an epic failure.





Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome, im "human rights,"
au "human rights" to "human rights"....