The underside of satire can be pathos; the dirty lining of glamour can be sleaze; and decadence can be both delicious and terribly sad.

	Harris Doran as the Emcee is surrounded by Kit Kat Girls in Pittsburgh Public Theater's "Cabaret." Click photo for larger image. 'Cabaret' Where: Pittsburgh Public Theater at O'Reilly Theater, 621 Penn Ave., Downtown. When: Through Feb. 25; Tues.-Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun. 2 and 7 p.m.; some exceptions. Tickets: $39-$60; 412-316-1600.

These sweet-sour dichotomies are the essence of "Cabaret," in which the considerable resources of Pittsburgh Public Theater and director-choreographer Ted Pappas are now on display, from cast and accompaniment to design and decor. The result is a robust, entertaining and somber realization of the potent 1966 musical drama, with its sardonic, pulsating score by John Kander and Fred Ebb.

This is a major achievement, because, although "Cabaret" is a great musical, it isn't easy, requiring a balancing act between slick and seedy. Take Sally Bowles, the English waif who sings at the decadent Kit Kat Klub in 1930s Berlin. The story requires that she be a so-so talent posing plaintively as a diva of the demimonde. But in performance, the demands of Kander and Ebb's marvelous songs require dynamite.

The cabaret club also poses contrasting demands. With its frenetic, inventive emcee and long-legged showgirls, it promises randy entertainment -- "leeff all your troubles outzide," the Emcee advises with a very broad wink. But gradually the club begins to replicate that outside, with the rise of the Nazis, and those leering entertainers become more threatening than enticing.

Pappas' solution takes the safest route, wisely avoiding the dated bounce and sparkle of the 1966 Hal Prince original and the 1972 Bob Fosse movie, but also the bolder satanic vamp and frigid chill of the 1998 Sam Mendes-Rob Marshall Broadway revival (which came to Heinz Hall in 2000).

It's not that Pappas' take isn't dark and its sexual leer provocative; it just avoids the strychnine-laced extreme that "Cabaret" can support. Myself, I'm a sucker for that extreme. But Pappas' version is very skillful, washed with a poignant nostalgia that also has much appeal.

It is based most directly on the intermediate 1987 Broadway revival that integrated some of the movie material into the stage version. In the movie, Sally became American (to accommodate Liza Minnelli), with her supposed lover, Cliff, British. And the musical's important subplot of Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz reverted to that of a younger couple, as in the musical's source, John Van Druten's 1951 play, "I Am a Camera," which was adapted from Christopher Isherwood's "Berlin Stories."

Confused? Don't be. Here, Cliff is again American (from Harrisburg, Pa.); Sally is indeterminately British; and the older couple is back.

So is, triumphantly, Pittsburgh's Lenora Nemetz, who is living "Cabaret" history. One of the Kit Kat Girls in the Broadway original, she played Fraulein Kost in the 2000 tour, a role she reprises here with pitch-perfect comedy and malice. (Someday she'll play Fraulein Schneider.)

Sally is played by Tari Kelly with a transparent neediness and an expressive, yearning voice, avoiding extremes of starry divahood. Daniel Krell's Cliff feels exaggeratedly innocent to start, but he grows into his final despair, and Krell makes us wish Cliff did more singing.

Harris Doran is a baby-faced Emcee with protean talent. Rather than the dominant personality the Emcee became in the recent Broadway revival, Pappas has returned him to the frame device he originally was, and Doran's pungent cabaret turns provide both performance electricity and a sour/shocking commentary on the story's doomed relationships.

Brooks Almy and Scott Robertson realize the plaintiveness of the older couple. She gets off on an awkward foot with an overly belted "So What?" but then settles into a more believable balance between hopeful and resigned. He is at his most tragic in his insistence that this Nazi foolishness will pass.

Among the busy, energetic Kit Kat Girls is Daina Michelle Griffith, who in 2002 played both Sally in a Point Park "Cabaret" and Polly in Playhouse Rep's "Threepenny Opera" by Brecht and Weill, who are Kander and Ebb's chief inspiration. Let that suggest the experience and savvy of the other girls, too: Leasen Almquist, Renee Monique Brown, Stephanie Lynn Nelson and Carol Schulberg.

Pappas' largesse as show-biz impresario starts with the lobby, which is darkened and blacked out. The theater's blond wood is draped with shiny black streamers, its railings wrapped in red fabric. The seats beside the thrust stage have small cabaret tables, their glowing red lampshades adding atmosphere to the world created by designers James Noone, David Zyla, Kirk Bookman and Zach Moore.

Above the stage sits music director F. Wade Russo's fine eight-piece orchestra, outfitted in lederhosen, knee socks and Tyrolean hats, except for Russo, who appears as a goateed transvestite.

To both sides, you see the debris of backstage and of the war years to come. Those years are clear in the Emcee's final exit, not directly into the gas chambers but out through lines of Nazi officers. Cliff is left to sort through his memories, both joyful and bitter. As are we.