St Paul's Drama Group

Sitting in his room in Fräulein Schneider's flat in Berlin, the young writer Christopher Isherwood records his impressions of the city. Although Berlin is disturbed by ominous Nazi rioting, Isherwood notes, “I am a camera, with its shutter open, quite passive.”

Some of his carefully nurtured passivity disappears when he is introduced to Sally Bowles an attractive, flamboyant singer at a local night club, and they strike up an immediate friendship. Neither Sally's insistence that Isherwood never ask about her past nor her becoming pregnant by another man seriously affects their relationship.

What does come between them is the growing political turmoil. Isherwood elects to leave Berlin, but Sally, as apolitical as she is amoral, chooses to remain. Based on Isherwood's autobiographical Berlin Stories,