From theatre to club. The creative team behind Cabaret tells us how the stage space has been reimagined: inspirations, technical details, and scenic design.

 

(Re)Defining Cabaret

Let’s think for a moment about how one might define a cabaret in its most academic and rational sense. The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) describes it as: “a nightlife venue where performances are offered.”
While this is accurate in classical terms, does it still apply to the kind of space we’re building at LETSGO? Let’s break it down into its three key elements.

Yes, it’s a venue —in the broadest sense— because it’s essentially a theatre deconstructed into a club. But it’s also a venue in a more clandestine sense. LETSGO has a solid and successful track record in creating underground spaces: Medias Puri, Uñas Chung Lee, Tacones Manoli… As Felype de Lima —head of costume and set design— points out:

That aesthetic of the hidden, the unexpected, feels very close to us.

Cabaret, then, becomes a secret venue:

The idea is for the audience to arrive without knowing exactly how to get in, to go through a pre-show experience that already creates this mysterious mood. Once inside, they find a space completely transformed. Everything —the set, the colors, the costumes, the lighting— contributes to this concept of secrecy, exclusivity, and the unrepeatable.

Now let’s look at “nightlife entertainment”… and the famous “where performances are offered.” Yes, there will be entertainment, with a nocturnal feel —it couldn’t be otherwise— but we’ll subvert that final part of the definition, the one that implies a passive spectator.

Here, the show will be anything but contemplative.

This staging breaks the fourth wall entirely. The stage as such disappears—it’s taken over by the audience. And the actors move among them. Everything is designed to erase that emotional and physical distance. So that the audience doesn’t just watch: they live Cabaret from the inside.

A New Kind of Spectator

This new relationship between stage and audience didn’t happen by chance. It’s the result of the organic evolution of a show like Cabaret. The team behind the set design —Felype de Lima and Paloma Correa— studied the various versions of the production throughout the years. From this research came a unique experience, for both spectators and actors. As Felype de Lima explains:

We moved from a traditional proscenium stage —with that classic separation between actors and audience— to a more provocative layout, eventually arriving at the two-sided thrust stage used in the latest UK and US productions. Here, we wanted to go even further: break down the barrier completely, destroy the fourth wall, and let the audience literally enter the stage. The entire theatre becomes the Kit Kat Klub, and the actors move freely among the audience. It’s undoubtedly the most interesting concept we’ve developed for Cabaret.
Sitting in a club, having musicians right next to you, seeing the characters pass by, hearing them sing just inches away… It’s the most immersive and emotionally powerful way to experience this story.

 

From Theatre to Club: The Transformation

Transforming the Albéniz Theatre has been one of the production’s greatest challenges —but not the only one. Fully remodeling the theatre’s layout meant dismantling the original stalls and rebuilding the space into stepped platforms, preserving the slope and supporting electrical setups, tables, chairs, lamps, carpeting… all to recreate the new club atmosphere.

We tried to reflect the inclination of the old seating layout in the new design. There’s this sort of ‘dip’ between both areas, and from there, everything emerges again. We’re talking about more than 400 chairs, a real sea of tables, lamps, phones, Bonnet-style furniture… Designing that continuity, dissolving the barriers, and blending the layout so that everything becomes stage was one of the most complex parts. —says Felype de Lima.

But what defined the design of the space and set throughout? The immersive format, no doubt. Technically, it was a challenge, not only in construction but also in the finishing details. The audience will see —and judge— everything up close: costumes, colors, sound, lights. For the design team, it’s been a new kind of adventure; they’re used to working with traditional lighting grids, stage lines, and sound setups. With the audience inside the set, the technical equipment had to be disguised or fully integrated into the decor.

One Set, Multiple Worlds

This new version also introduces a unique scenic design —another break from the traditional musical— built not just with objects, but with atmospheres. Throughout the show, signs and other elements signal the transition between spaces: the Kit Kat Klub, the boarding house, the fruit shop… All is marked by a deliberate ambiguity. The audience is never entirely sure if they’re inside or outside —and in this sense, each viewer chooses their level of immersion. These shifting environments serve a clear purpose: to support the narrative and build up to the dramatic ending:

The ending has to feel like: “what just happened here?” The set change is brutal. And one element amplifies it all: Valerio Tiberi’s lighting design. The way he reshapes space through light —his architectural use of illumination— is stunning.

A Sensory Journey

The set is as immersive as the story itself. In Cabaret, it becomes an emotional device: its purpose is not only to place the audience in a physical location, but also to shift their mental state. From the first step into the theatre —or rather, the club— a sensory narrative is activated.

The spectator is quickly surrounded by stimuli from the entrance and the preshow: the proximity of the actors, the masterful lighting and sound, the textures and effects, the red flooring, the curtains, the furnishings. This sensory saturation triggers emotional alertness. From theatre spectator to Kit Kat Klub guest.

We want the audience to walk in and go: ‘Wow.’ That visual shock from the very first second, with an entirely red set —floors, chairs, curtains— and a concentric layout that draws the eye to a central point: a table where people will sit just inches away from the performers.

In this Cabaret, the spatial design works almost like a state of mind. It shifts between the euphoria of the show and the looming threat of what’s to come. That tension is built scenographically, with a new twist on immersive theatre: not just spatial, but emotional. And that nuance —a symbolic and sensory jolt— is precisely what invites reflection on our current social and political landscape.

 

By the LETSGO Pen, Claudia Pérez Carbonell, on August 5th, 2025