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Tony Nominations

 In 2024, "Maybe This Time" seems cheerfully retrograde; not only does the heroine state that happiness is impossible without a romantic attachment, but she also seems to think that she doesn't have agency. She is like tumbleweed, just blowing in the wind.


I wonder if Kander and Ebb studied "Guys and Dolls." Famously, in "Dolls," Guy, the male lead, sees "luck" as a willful sparring partner. If Guy loses all his money at the slots, it's because "luck" has opted not to "be a lady." If Guy sees gambling as a form of romance, then Kander and Ebb see romance as a form of gambling. Sally Bowles has been a "loser" in the game of love, but maybe this time, she will "win."

The other thing that I love in "Cabaret" is a classic example of "content dictating form." Kander and Ebb know how to conserve syllables; if they seem verbose, then they are being *deliberately* verbose. So consider these lines: "I won't be a loser anymore--like the last time, and the time before." It would be possible to write: "like all the previous times." But stretching out the sentence is a way of underlining Sally's agony: We feel her frustration as she wades through word after word, stumbling toward the "full stop" at the end of her thought.

Sorry, Liza Minelli. For me, there is only one real version of this song, and it belongs to Kristin Chenoweth. 

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