I fear I’ll forever measure productions of the dark musical “Cabaret” against that gritty gem I fell in love with last season — the one at the Desert Stages Theatre, back when that company was still housed in an unassuming corner of a Scottsdale strip mall.

It didn’t take much to transform that cramped black box playhouse into the Kit Kat Klub, the pre-Third Reich Berlin night spot where escapism flowed from the taps and the young dancing girls — most of whom would have been carded and denied entering a real nightclub — worked their moves around the most poly-sexual, pasty-
faced Master of Ceremonies this side of “The Rocky Horror Show’s” Dr. Frank ’n’ Furter.

It was jagged and delicate, sexy and haunting — a darker, scruffier little cousin to Sam Mendes’ 1998 revival that was then finishing up its run on Broadway.
But just as Desert Stages has made its way to better digs this season, so too has “Cabaret,” now opening Phoenix Theatre’s 2004-2005 season.

There’s nothing gritty this time around — the Kit Kat’s set (designed by Gregory Jaye) is a spectacle of plush grandeur, more Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge” than delphic Berlin nachtklub, even by its decline in the second act — and a sexier time could be had across the PT campus, where Nearly Naked Theatre is finishing up, coincidentally, “Rocky Horror.”

Swift and cinematically stylish, ribald without raunch, this “Cabaret,” directed by Michael Barnard, is a more traditional beauty.

Our emcee this time is Robert Kolby Harper, who also co-choreographed the show with Barnard. Harper’s energy is evident from the moment he descends from a brass pole and sweats through his pancaked face in the opening number alongside his tawdry Kit Kat Girls. Less nuanced than I would have expected, his emcee is played as big as the musical is — like The Joker melted with Hugh Hefner — and every bit of innuendo, it seems, is punctuated by Harper running his OK-signing thumb and index finger up and down an oh-so-Freudian cane.

The emcee not only issues forth the Kit Kat Klub’s rousing ensemble song and dance numbers (“Wilkommen,” “Two Ladies”; Barnard lavishes the club scenes and songs with attention), but also provides a more valuable service, guiding us through “Cabaret’s” conflicting love stories — between impetuous young dancer Sally Bowles (played by Sarah Wolter) and burgeoning writer/bi-curious innocent Cliff (Caleb Reese), and between spinster Fraulein Schneider (Betsy Beard) and beau Herr Schultz (Mike Lawler), aging lovers who are torn apart by encroaching anti-Semitism.

It’s difficult to find a balance between the two love stories, and Barnard chooses — whether consciously or not — the older couple’s story to present as the more riveting, though Lawler is a comparatively weaker presence in both acting and song.

I was nervous about Wolter’s Sally Bowles, especially when her “Perfectly Marvelous” started as little more than a Jill Haworth impersonation. But as the night wore on, and her impersonation gave way to something more genuine, I found myself joining the exquisitely equine actress’ fanclub, grinning at the deliciousness of her scene-chewing, dark chocolate take on the last-call title song.

I doubt most audiences will care about the relative lack of grit and scruff in Phoenix Theatre’s “Cabaret,” especially in the face of such a cinematically wondrous presentation — backed by an eight-piece orchestra that’s as solid as a rock and brassy as a little big band, and lighting design by Michael Eddy that almost deserves its own character credit.

And if the story’s just filler between great songs like “I Don’t Care Much” and “Don’t Tell Mama” (and “Mein Herr,” which Wolter sings with all the phony climax of Meg Ryan in “When Harry Met Sally”), rest assured this company does them good service.

As for me, I’m still more smitten with last season’s “Cabaret,” in all its raw glory. There’s something to be said for a production that underpolishes itself and lets the audience wrap its imagination around it instead. Besides, I’ve never been one for traditional beauty. (Cue up “If You Could See Her.”) I’ll take nuance over bombast anytime.