Review: Kim David Smith Vamping Through Hallo-Wien

When Marlene Dietrich first strutted through Paris in men’s trousers in the 1930s — an act so rebellious it literally broke French law — she embodied what Kim David Smith’s “Halloween-laced” edition of Mostly Marlene, his critically-acclaimed tribute show, magnificently celebrated at Neue Galerie New York’s Café Sabarsky on October 30, 2024.

But before one may experience the depth of cabaret, one demands it live up to their expectation of glitz and glamor. Smith, clad in leather upon leather, white bow tie, and a tall hat that looked like it’d walked straight out of Dietrich’s wardrobe, was more than ready to feed the audience’s imagination. Jaunty tunes flowed out of glittering, bold red lips, as he embodied Lola, who feels as comfortable setting boundaries as getting men wrapped around her finger. “The Man’s in the Navy” was another such gleeful number, where Smith harnessed his remarkable lower register and belting skills to paint the pictures of a dashing soldier that toys with hearts. A similar versatility of voice was displayed in the mashup of “Johnny, wenn du Geburtstag hast” and Madonna’s “Erotica.” While Dietrich sounds understated in recordings, and Madonna’s track features a chorus with an intentionally mumbled quality to create a trancelike state, Smith enunciated and caressed the consonants in the lyrics, and extended vowels for expressiveness. The reader might want to check out YouTube videos uploaded by Smith himself, which document his varied approaches to this, from as early as nine years ago.

And what Halloween show would it be, if Smith didn’t serve up some good old vampish fun? Fortunately, cabaret has just the most befitting song — “Ich bin ein Vamp!” The political satire is thinly veiled, both in the lyrics themselves, and Smith’s intro to the song: there is power in bearing witness and chronicling, in tapping into the vampire’s awe-inspiring allure as “half woman [and] half beast,” and the mythification of one’s self. To bite and turn one’s lover into a fellow member of the undead may be selfish, but baring the neck is often considered the highest sacrifice. “Dracula’s Tango,” therefore, flips the fear and thrill of it all around, in a fierce declaration of lust, as potent and legitimate as its more palatable sister, love.

Several songs, such as “Boys in the Back Room,” “Kabarett,” and “Just a Gigolo” tackle the notion of death head-on. The perceived lightheartedness of the former two supplied a preemptive antidote to indulging in prophecies of doom, and instead advocated for a focus on the present moment. “Just the Gigolo,” on the other hand, touched listeners with the rawness in its falsetto, as if laying bare a vain, entertainer’s heart. The out-of-body observations of the fakeness of certain social interactions and the inevitability of time and loss might be seen as another form of presence, rooted in introspection, as opposed to a blind chase.

 

Throughout the programing, Smith captured the spirit of Dietrich, without painstakingly imitating her every mannerism. “Black Market” and “Alles Schwindel” are nonetheless scathing, opting for dark humor over infinite political depression. “Peter” saw a transition from the nonchalance of the first verse to the sincerity of the second: it was up to the audience — or Peter, in this case — to tell the façade from her true colors. Tracy Stark supported these constant shifts of dynamic and tone at the piano, seamlessly weaving together Weimar classics and modern earworms, and revealing the emotional undercurrents of the otherwise jovial lyrics, with piano playing that matched Smith’s singing in virtuosity and artistic clarity.

As fear threatens to dictate everything from how we dress to who we love, the power of putting one’s heart out there, despite its consequent exposure to the risks of breaking, explains why cabaret has always been more than mere entertainment. It’s a sanctuary where our deepest fears are draped in sequins, where forbidden fashion becomes high art, and where — just as Dietrich once did — performers transform society’s restrictions into revelations, one serenade at a time.

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Find more upcoming shows at Cafe Sabarsky on their website.

Learn more about Kim David Smith on his website at kimdavidsmith.com

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