Emma Stone purrs and roars in 'Cabaret'

NEW YORK — Emma Stone doesn't so much sing her first lines as Sally Bowles as purr them.

Making her Broadway debut as the desperate, doomed showgirl in the Roundabout Theatre Company's current revival of Cabaret (at Studio 54), Stone turns up in a little pink slip to deliver Don't Tell Mama, one of the naughty confections with which Sally and her co-workers regal customers at Weimar Berlin's Kit Kat Klub. The movie star's voice sounds slight and breathy, with a touch of whiskey at the edges; as she dances with the other Kit Kat Girls, she comes across as a particularly spry, playful sex kitten.

But this cat can pounce, and bite, and Stone does both in short order. That the 26-year-old star of films such as Easy A and The Amazing Spider-Man series would bring humor and empathy to the role of Sally was predictable, but what comes as a surprise is Stone's capacity for rage, both in its repressed and active forms.

With her husky voice and decisive (if sometimes impish) gestures, Stone shows less patent fragility than Michelle Williams, her predecessor in this production, did. Stone's Sally is a more defiant creature of her own invention, asserting her blurred truths and affectations with the air of a tough and practiced con artist.

Yet Stone also shows us, movingly, how Sally's guard can slip, in gestures as small as putting her fingers to her mouth self-consciously while waiting for Cliff, the visiting American and aspiring writer who has become her latest lover, to decide whether to let her move in. At other points, the actress lets Sally's anger and self-doubt pour forth unbridled; the musical number Mein Herr evolves into a tantrum, Cabaret into a tearful meltdown.

For those wondering how strong Stone's singing is: Does it matter that much? Sally is a wannabe performer, and some of the women who have played her most successfully — including Liza Minnelli, for all her charisma and sheer force — have not had especially pretty or technically supple voices. Stone hits her notes accurately and stylishly, summoning power when she needs to and letting a hoarse whisper suffice when the mood calls for it.

This Cabaret has, happily, retained the excellent players cast in principal roles when it opened back in April, so Stone shares the stage with duly treasured troupers such as Linda Emond and Danny Burstein — as charming and heartbreaking as ever as the mature, ill-fated lovers Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz — and, of course, the inimitable Alan Cumming as our Emcee.

For a young woman with no stage credits listed in her playbill bio to prove worthy of their company is no small feat. So welcome, Ms. Stone. Happy to see you.