"Cabaret," International City Theatre, Long Beach, CA, by James Scarborough

Excellent stage and musical direction, acting and musical numbers, visuals that will take your breath away, and a reminder that you should make hay while the sun shines characterize ICT’s Cabaret, based on John Van Druten’s play “I Am a Camera and stories by Christopher Isherwood, directed by Jules Aaron with musical direction by Brian Murphy, at the Center Theatre.

Avoiding the movie version’s kitsch and clamor, Aaron tints the production noir. Sure, the Soojin Lee’s costumes are risqué and saucy (mounds of flesh, bright flashy bits, nice touch on the Emcee’s New Year’s Eve diaper) and Don Llewllyn’s stage reflects, literally, an un-calm before a storm, the kinkiness of mirrored ceilings, and, in general, the heyday of 1930 Berlin’s Kit Kat Club.

But the characters don’t so much move and dance across the stage like dervishes, caught up in the abandonment of the moment, as they float above it.

They were of the scene and above it.

It’s chilling to have the Club performers, who look like they’re cryogenically frozen, awaiting their chance to come back to life, glare at the audience from the wings while bedroom or other scenes are enacted in the center part of the stage.

The trifurcation of the stage –like a three-ring circus - also concentrated the center stage action. It insulated the interior reverie, for the most part, from the external damnation.

Aaron’s tone is an effective one, frenetic and harried. It sets up that final, jack-boot moment when the overhead mirrored panel ever-so-slowly flips over. The characters turn their back to the audience and look up to read, printed on its reverse side with chilling, gulag certainty the Nazi slogan that Arbeit Macht Frei (Work shall set you free), the motto that hung over the entrance to Auschwitz.

Then the mirror shuts like a drawbridge. Those who managed to escape are free, those who didn’t, well, that’s another story.

The acting was great. Jason Currie’s Emcee was part Cirque du Soleil, part Rocky Horror. He was everywhere at once, moving the action forward, being ironic, castigating soldiers and Fuhrers. Watch his puppet scene that closes the first act. He was the most engaging of the lot as well as the most aghast at the prospect of incursions into his own Edenic demimonde that he so nicely describes in “Welcome to Berlin.”

The actors that played the love interest were equally effective. Erin Bennett’s portrayal of Sally Bowles, an ultimately doomed femme fatal flapper was chilling because, even though we knew how the story ended (“life is a cabaret, old chum”), her survival instinct made us hope that she’d take the safe path with Clifford Bradshaw (Christopher Carothers).

Carothers was Harrison Ford stolid, not virginal but not world-weary, either. This made him fair game to be corrupted but all the wiser to escape when he could.

Performances are 8pm, Thu – Sat, 2pm, Sun. The show runs until March 9. Tickets are $35-45. The Theatre is located at the Performing Arts Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd. For more info call 436-4610 or visit www.ictlongbeach.org.