History TearJerker / Cabaret

* Sally's confession that she has had the abortion, she is broken, almost a shell of herself; when she hits at the act Clifford doesn't clock it, but when she tells him, he responses with a slap. She remarks it would have ended this way with or without a baby, then Cliff gives Sally a train ticket for Paris. She pretends to be the old Sally with a witty remark, clearly she won't try to find him but she pleads with him to give her something in the book he will write about them. As he shuts the door she sits alone as the lights fade.

** Creator/NatashaRichardson’s rendition perfectly embodies the StepfordSmiler trope. Even when she starts welling up with tears by the end, she still never drops that poor, hopeless smile…

* When the script was revised in 1987 (the revivals since then have more or less followed this script) to include Cliff's homosexuality, Sally has a line after the abortion where she tells Cliff that domestic life would never have worked out for ''either'' of them...that either "I'd have run away with the first exciting thing that came along...''or you would.''" Meaning, of course, that Cliff wouldn't have been able to keep up the facade of being a straight husband. When Cliff protests, "That's not true, I would never have run away, not if there was a baby..." Sally replies, "To hold us together, you mean? Oh, Cliff, what a terrible burden to place on an infant." This scene can be twice as heartbreaking if Cliff takes a moment to silently realize that Sally's right, that he'd never have fit into a heteronormative lifestyle and, deep down, he knew it all along.

* The title song. Natasha Richardson's tragic death does ''not'' help. The revival often features the Emcee flinging himself forward at the final as the lights flicker out - implying he [[DrivenToSuicide leapt onto the electric fence]].
* The Emcee's ending is two kinds of tragic, depending on how one interprets his presence in the play. If he's just a symbol for Germany, start to finish, then that final reveal in the prison uniform is a WhatHaveIBecome moment. But if you interpret the Emcee as also being a real character, then we're seeing a broken human being who was once the Master of Ceremonies, now another Jewish and gay victim of the Holocaust.

* During some versions of the title song, Sally puts a noticeable pause between "The day she died" and "the neighbors came to snicker." There's two possible interpretations for that pause both of which are depressing: If the song is just a metaphor for what Sally's going through, then it could be the moment she realizes what fate her hard-core partying lifestyle will lead her to. If the song is something that actually happened to Sally, then she's reliving her friend Elsie's death and how she overheard people making fun of her on the day she died.

* Sally's confession that she has had the abortion, she is broken, almost a shell of herself, when she hits at the act Clifford doesn't clock it, but when she tells him, he responses with a slap, she remarks it would have ended this way with or without a baby, then Cliff gives Sally a train ticket for Paris. She pretends to be the old Sally with a witty remark, clearly she won't try to find him but she pleads with him to give her something in the book he will write about them. As he shuts the door she sits alone as the lights fade.