Sally Bowles, the heroine of Cabaret, paints her fingernails bright green to shock people. The Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of Cabaret, to give just one example, ends its first act with a man mooning the audience, revealing a swastika painted on his right buttock, which amounts to more or less the same thing as the green fingernails. Sally, remember, is ultimately a sad, lost remnant of a decadent era. That's about the best that this ill-conceived, grossly misguided grotesquery of a musical can hope for.

To begin, let me tell you that the original Cabaret, and the slightly modified 1987 revival, are favorites of mine. They told a story of a giddy world lulled into evil: Joel Grey'[...]