Willkommen! Actor Sloan feels welcome as Emcee of touring ‘Cabaret’

It’s raunchy. It’s raucous. It’s racy. And Christopher Sloan has been doing it eight and nine times a week, sometimes twice a day since September.

“It’s a pleasure every night,” he says with complete elation and conviction.

Sloan isn’t referring to anything vulgar or illegal. He’s speaking about playing the role of the Emcee in the national tour of the award-winning musical “Cabaret,” which will have three performances June 14-15 at Merrill Auditorium in Portland.

A New York-based actor originally from Indiana, Sloan has been traveling with the cast performing in the role first popularized in the 1960s by Joel Grey and reinterpreted by Alan Cumming with new bump-and-grind choreography in the 1990s Sam Mendes revival. The show opened in London in 1993 and eventually moved to Studio 54 in New York City, where it continues to fill houses and wow audiences with a revolving cast of stars.

The show is an adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s “Berlin Stories,” about his travels in Germany at the end of the 1920s when the cabaret scene in Berlin was wildly popular and irreverent. At the center of the story is the British cabaret performer Sally Bowles, based on a singer Isherwood lived with in Berlin, and about the milieu surrounding their lives at the Kit Kat Klub.

That’s where the scathingly slick wit and insightful routine of the Emcee takes place. While audiences have regularly cheered the show-girl title song and it’s “life is a cabaret” lyrics, the Emcee is the guide through risque 1920s Berlin. He invites the audience to kick back, have fun, be a part of it all.

But in the midst of the revelry, the show also exposes the rise of Nazi power and the encroaching anti-Semitism that exploded in World War II. The end is a poignant commentary on the evils underlying the Third Reich.

For Sloan, who has performed in musicals in New York and in the national tour of “The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber” with Petula Clark, the Emcee is a formidable dramatic lead – and the heart of the play.

“The Emcee is about having fun,” says Sloan, speaking from a hotel room in South Bend, Ind., where he had performed the night before. “That’s what he says in the beginning: Leave your troubles outside. He wants everybody to have fun – and he means in every way: booze, drugs, sex, everything. By the end, he idealistically wants to hold on to that, but it’s not possible in reality, which sneaks up like the Nazi party did on Germany.”

The Mendes production won over critics with its seedy, gritty, bruised and battered cast of provocative dancers and musicians (who perform onstage).

In rehearsals, the director and choreographer encouraged the actor-dancers to move slowly through the steps.

“They told us to be aware of each other’s boundaries,” says Sloan, who studied musical theater at Otterbein College in Ohio. “But they were also clear about saying that the show is about debauchery. We were prepared to go there. You can’t have trepidation in any way.”

Sloan, who is 29, cautions that the production is geared to an adult audience. Still, he adds, the story is strong enough to keep even the most conservative audience members in their seats.

The demands of the performance have also required that Sloan and the cast give their all every night. There’s room for spontaneity, says Sloan, but you also have to be reliable and alert.

“When you’re on the road so much, it would be easy to get sloppy,” said Sloan. “But first and foremost, it’s a different audience every night and they expect to get a great show. That’s our job. I’m doing what I love and I am going to give it my all every night. Everyone is this production gives their all every night.”

The tour ends in Canada on June 23, after which Sloan will return to his home in midtown Manhattan and look for more work.

“I’ve been really lucky,” he says, “because I’ve worked constantly since leaving college.”

PCA Great Performances will present the national tour of “Cabaret” 8 p.m. June 14 and 15, and 2 p.m. June 15 at Merrill Auditorium in Portland. Tickets are $34, $42 and $49. For information, call 842-0800.