‘We were a little naive’: staging Cabaret, in the 60s and now

As a new staging of Cabaret starring Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley opens in London, director Rebecca Frecknall and 94-year-old composer John Kander, the only survivor of the original creative team, swap stories

John Kander peers over the top of his glasses and smiles broadly. What are you most scared about? Was there any moment when your heart sank?" he asks, kindly. Rebecca Frecknall grins back. We're most scared about 600 people coming to see it," she says. There are just so many unknowns."

The pair are thousands of miles apart - one in upstate New York, the other in London - and they are talking via Zoom. But the tie that binds them overcomes distance and space. Composer Kander, with his late, long-time professional partner, the lyricist Fred Ebb, created Cabaret, the show that invented the concept musical. Frecknall is currently directing a starry new production (previews have just started) with Eddie Redmayne as the mysterious and sinister Emcee, Jessie Buckley as lost show girl Sally Bowles and Omari Douglas, so brilliant on TV this year in Russell T Davies's It's a Sin, as the bisexual writer Cliff Bradshaw.