In 1951 Walter Kerr famously reviewed I am a Camera with three words – Me no Leica. So perhaps it’s no wonder that the show has never been revived on Broadway.

Having recently seen Porchlight’s still-running, fabulous production of Cabaret, the classic musical that sprang from Camera, I was curious to view the original play (which is, of course, why it was presented as part of the Porchlight Revisits series at this time and despite the fact that it’s not itself a musical). As the guy sitting next to me said, how did they have the vision to turn this play into Cabaret?

The legendary Julie Harris won her first of five Tonys for her depiction of Sally Bowles in Camera. She must have delivered a supernatural performance to convince the voters to care even a little bit about the character. I sure didn’t. Fortunately, the Isherwood self-portrait, which is the centerpiece, picks up some of the slack, and the acting all around was excellent.

Still, I kept wondering whether the unseen interactions between the secondary characters of Fritz and Natalia might not have been more interesting to watch than was the banal relationship between Sally and her mother, which seemed rather beside the point of the second act.