'Cabaret's" Sally Bowles is high on the shopping list when it comes to Broadway stunt casting opportunities. And for good reason.

Sally, the British nightclub performer who sleeps her way into the spotlight in an early 1930s Berlin cabaret, need not be a great singer. And she's shallow, so even an amateur actor can muster the minimum emotional range.

Best of all, a lackluster Sally won't spoil the show, though a great one can enrich it. Former teen pop star Deborah Gibson finds a satisfactory middle ground in N.C. Theatre's "Cabaret."

Gibson was one of a string of Sallys who replaced Tony winner Natasha Richardson in the 1998 Broadway revival -- after film stars Brooke Shields, Molly Ringwald, Gina Gershon and Joely Fisher, and former Miss America Kate Shindle, among others.

Gibson has the vocal range. Guided by guest director Connie Shafer, Gibson captures Sally's restlessness, naivete and self-absorption. And her frequent lisp adds to the character's childlike demeanor, even as it garbles her enunciation.

Gibson wins her audience quickly with her cheeky rendition of Sally's first show tune, the naughty "Don't Tell Mama." Clad in a baby-doll negligee, she gives her audience the kind of titillating, panty-baring spectacle that infatuated fans yearned for, to no avail, back in her prim pop star days.

But in her potential show-stoppers -- "Maybe This Time" and the climactic title tune -- Gibson fails to find the blend of cynicism and despair that can break our hearts. Those who saw Shindle when the national tour came to Raleigh in 2000 -- or Liza Minnelli in the 1972 film -- know the power these songs can hold.

But that's OK. Even on a good night, Sally isn't the star of this dark and brilliant tale. At heart, the show is about the triumph of hate and evil over love and hope.

For love, we look to Fraulein Schneider, who runs the rooming house where Sally lives with bisexual American Clifford Bradshaw (Brian Duguay), an aspiring novelist. The elderly Schneider (Rebecca Hoodwin) falls in love with a widower tenant, the German Jew Herr Schultz (UNC-Chapel Hill alumnus Kenny Morris). Played with warmth and humor, they make a beautiful pair.

When the play premiered on Broadway in 1966, audiences knew the fate of these doomed lovers and the millions of other Jews, gays and others. That freed up script writer Joe Masteroff and composers John Kander and Fred Ebb to focus on the factors that fueled the Nazis in the early days: hate, fear, complacency and ill-advised optimism.

Our lens to the horror is the Kit Kat Klub's master of ceremonies, whom Christopher Sloan plays superbly, with a pure voice and cruel cynicism. Shafer and choreographer Jennifer Werner capture the dichotomy of cheap thrills and the grim morning after that looms on the horizon.

Robert Brill's set design from the revival evokes the musical's settings. And the onstage band plays superbly under guest conductor John O'Neill. This version, though not as naughty as the reconceived Broadway revival and subsequent tour, features Raleigh-raised Broadway designer William Ivey Long's sexy costume designs.

In all, this production is memorable, with a theme that remains timely as the world continues to sprout new horrors. At play's end the emcee asks, "Where are your troubles now? Forgotten?" To N.C. Theatre's credit, they are anything but.