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Eddie Redmayne and Angela Bassett Journey to Berlin at ‘Cabaret’ Opening

“I’m so ready for this,” said the actress Bernadette Peters on Saturday afternoon as she stood on the red carpet outside the August Wilson Theater on 52nd Street, which had been styled to look like a Berlin nightclub in the 1930s.

“It’s sort of like a Happening,” she added.

Ms. Peters had turned up for a performance of one of the hottest — and some of the most expensive — tickets on Broadway this season: A revival of “Cabaret,” the 1966 John Kander and Fred Ebb musical, which celebrated its opening night with twin galas on Saturday and Sunday. The production, which is set in a Berlin nightclub on the eve of the Nazis’ rise to power, features Eddie Redmayne as the nightclub’s Master of Ceremonies and Gayle Rankin as its star singer, Sally Bowles.

“For British actors, coming here to Broadway is the dream, so tonight is a pinch-me moment,” said Mr. Redmayne, who played the Master of Ceremonies during the show’s sold-out run in London in 2022, for which he won an Olivier Award — the British equivalent of a Tony Award — for best actor in a musical.

A few dozen celebrities — Angela Bassett, Rachel Zegler and the director Baz Luhrmann among them — came to see Mr. Redmayne, who is also a producer of “Cabaret.”

But this wasn’t the usual turn-up-five-minutes-before-the show drill: Unlike a typical Broadway show, “Cabaret” includes a preshow at every performance that begins 75 minutes before curtain.

Angela Bassett
Gayle Rankin in vintage Julien Macdonald

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