A blowout party in the face of fear? Guthrie readies ‘Cabaret’ as its big, splashy summer musical.

The Emcee is back onstage at the Kit Kat Klub, ginning up the fun in the sanctuary where sultry singers and dancers entertain for dear life.

“Cabaret,” the Kander and Ebb masterwork about a nightclub that serves as an oasis of freedom and pleasure in the waning days of Weimar Germany, is coming to the Guthrie Theater.

Even before its June 26 opening, Joseph Haj’s production made the New York Times list of national shows to see this summer.

“It’s fun and sexy with big, welcoming arms,” Haj said before a recent rehearsal.

Like he did in last year’s epic History Plays, where he used a crown as a totemic metaphor, Haj has found an emblem for the show. He’s using a train, evoked through sound and other design elements, to tie the story together and show the aperture closing on freedom.

The club itself is a microcosm of “a society that’s dancing as fast as possible — that’s keeping the lights swirling and the volume up to keep from hearing and seeing this train that’s thundering toward them,” Haj said.

Adapted from Christopher Isherwood’s 1939 novel “Goodbye to Berlin” and John Van Druten’s 1951 play “I Am a Camera,” the musical premiered on Broadway to huzzahs in 1966, winning eight Tonys, including best musical.

In 1972, it was made into a film by Bob Fosse, starring Liza Minnelli and introducing new numbers such as “Mein Herr,” “Money” and “Maybe This Time.” The movie won eight Oscars.

Sam Mendes directed a 1993 version at London’s Donmar Warehouse that came to Broadway in 1998 with Alan Cumming as the Emcee and Natasha Richardson as Sally Bowles, both of whom would go on to win Tonys.

That version squared to its themes more frontally, including the Emcee’s bisexuality and the characters’ desperation and behaviors in the face of rising fascism.

Haj is using that 1998 script, which includes the new songs, for what is his second production of the show. He first directed “Cabaret” in 2012 at PlayMakers Repertory Theatre, the Chapel Hill, N.C., company he formerly headed, with Taylor Mac serving as the Emcee.

Now he has hired New Yorker Jo Lampert for that pivotal role, as well as fellow New York Broadway actors Jason Forbach (“The Phantom of the Opera,” “Les Miserables” and “Into the Woods”) as Cliff and Mary Kate Moore (“Into the Woods”) as Sally Bowles.

“When you make plays multiple times, you learn where the cul-de-sacs are and what is maybe not worth chasing,” Haj said. “It’s a different thing because you come back with different people and you’re older, so it’d be embarrassing if you’re not at least fractionally smarter for having made it once.”

Haj cast Lampert after first seeing her play the title character in David Byrne’s rock opera “Joan of Arc: Into the Fire” at New York’s Public Theatre.

“I’m a Jewish dyke with Holocaust survivor grandparents who’re no longer alive,” Lampert said. She added that she’s just as curious about how she will inhabit the Emcee as audiences may be, especially given some of the things that the character has to sing and say.

As an actor, she is not playing her biology, Lampert noted.

“But at the end of ‘The Gorilla Song’ [‘If You Could See Her,’ which implies that the simian is Jewish], I think about my own nose, about my own grandparents,” she said. “Epigenetics, this idea of trauma being passed down cellularly, are real. I’m curious about the epigenetic trauma of me meeting this character.”

“Many of the cabaret performers were Jewish, some were gay and they were nightly skewering contemporary politics like a John Oliver or a Jon Stewart would,” Haj said.

Later, Jewish artists in the concentration camps performed for one another and their captors.

Classically trained and a member of the Guthrie acting company decades ago, Haj said that he arrived late to staging musicals. But when he does take them on, he looks at the architecture of the shows.

“’Cabaret’ plays in romantic comedy tropes until it doesn’t,” Haj said, adding that there’s no need to update the historic setting of the play as it speaks for itself. “Berlin was the gay capital of Europe during this time. And the story is the beginning of the downslope after an incredible crescendo of artistic output.”

About the role: “I’m struck by how vulnerable the people inside the club are, and how desperate the Emcee is to keep everyone safe. The Emcee is always singing about what came before. So, there’s this tug between being omnipresent and omniscient, and finding things out in real time. Somehow the Emcee is both privy to hope and desperation and also a victim of it.”

Fave songs: When I hear “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” at the end of Act One, it’s a revelation that this club, which he thinks of as a safe space, is so vulnerable. I am in the Pineapple song [“It Couldn’t Please Me More (Pineapple)”] seeing things before other people do. I’m witnessing and have information but I’m not the puppeteer."

First “Cabaret”: “I first saw a regional production of the show in the early 2000s, and don’t remember much about it. It’s a fever dream.”

Recalling Sally: “I have very specific sense memory of Sally in the middle of the stage all lit up singing ‘Cabaret’ and falling apart. It was such a visceral moment because everything about that character leading up to that moment is bravado. She’s electric, bold, wild and uninhibited.”

About the role: “I don’t identify with any of those things, so it feels very seductive to find her charm and glitz and glamour. She talks about being like a tiger chasing her prey, but she’s the prey the entire time. She’s fabricated this reality for herself that allows her to get what she wants, which is to be the center of attention, to be adored and be a sparkly muse.”

On life: “The truth is that oftentimes I’m not reading the news because it feels easier. It’s a privilege for me because I am a white woman living in America today. It’s important to represent that kind of ideology so that we can all see how tragically that ends for her, too.”

First “Cabaret”: “I grew up in Kansas City with limited access to theater. In 1997, I saw the Broadway tour revival as a gift for my 12th or 13th birthday. They always talk about these ‘Ring of Keys’ moments [from the musical “Fun Home”] when queer people see someone that helps identify something in themselves. I remember feeling that sensation watching the show."

About the role: “With Cliff, I’ve never played a character that I’ve related to so fully. I know deeply what it is to feel different in a conservative society and to construct a self to survive. I am also a writer who loves being around electric people.”

On Sally and Cliff: “Looking at the relationship between Sally and Cliff I see two sides of the same coin. At the end of this show, in the face of immeasurable loss, their compulsion is to create. She has to sing about it and he has to write.”

What it means to be queer: “To me, the greatest act of rebellion is self-expression. To be a trans person in small towns and make art anyway is the boldest, bravest thing someone can do in the face of oppression.”

History with the show: “I was first cast in this role before the pandemic. Five years later, it feels very different.”

About the role: “Fräulein Schneider is stuck. She’s never been married but had a relationship long ago that she talks about in the song ‘So What?’ All her life she’s managed by herself, surviving war, revolution and inflation, and she thinks she’s too old to change."

Why she does it: “It’s good to have this role because I don’t have to think about me as Michelle until I get home at night. I do it as a tribute to Michael [Brindisi’s] philosophy, which is the same as Fraulein Schneider’s — just keep going no matter how difficult it gets.”

Fave song: Her second-act song, “What Would You Do?” is the theme of mankind.

Who’s Texas: “She’s a magnetic, fascinating Black woman who loves her unique place as the only one in this club. I’ve been playing around if Texas is actually American or from Europe or Africa.”

Getting inside her skin: “I used some research about a Black writer from Chicago who was traveling across Europe during this time and sending reports back to the paper. I also think of her like a Josephine Baker-type entertainer. And I use my own experience living in Europe and singing in nightclubs in London and Paris.”

In “Cabaret”: “Texas is a chameleon and survivor who shifts as required. She likes people’s fascination with her and uses some of that. And as the atmosphere starts to shift, she knows the stakes are rising but how bad can things really get?”

A radical change: “After playing Carole King in ‘Beautiful’ [including Chanhassen Dinner Theatres] for the last five years this is the first new role I’ve learned, and it’s so different. I’ve had friends ask, ‘Fräulein Kost, who’s that again?’ Then they go, ‘Oh, yeah, she’s the prostitute.’”

First “Cabaret” fixation: “I first became really obsessed with ‘Cabaret’ after seeing the 2014 revival with Alan Cumming, Emma Stone and Michelle Williams. I was in school in New York and saw it several times.”

The attraction: “I love Kander and Ebb’s juxtaposition of this very dark, realistic play with over-the-top, crazy production numbers. It’s easy to be distracted by wow, the dancing, the costumes and the gorilla suit but these things also reflect what’s happening.”

On not judging Fräulein Kost: “She works at the Kit Kat Klub surrounded by all these wonderful performers — queer people, young people, different types of people. And she can live in that world then also support this horrible party. It’s a dicey line. I try not to judge her.”

First “Cabaret”: “I first acted in ‘Cabaret’ as a college student at Winona State University 40-plus years ago playing one of the sailors and singing songs that are no longer in the show.”

About the role: “Max is a symbol of the direction the country is going in and he’s hopping onto the power train for the ride. He’s a blink-of-an-eye character but has outsized influence. He’s a catalyst for Sally going to Cliff and for Sally leaving Cliff. If Sally’s living on a knife’s edge, Max has the knife.”

Where: Guthrie Theater, 818 S. 2nd St., Mpls.

When: 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 1 & 7:30 p.m. Sat., 1 & 7 p.m. Sun. Ends Aug. 24.

Tickets: $39-$105, 612-377-2224, guthrietheater.org.