That’s right, friends! MOSTLY MARLENE is taking the hallowed stage at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theatre, for a live album recording on Sunday, February 27th at 9:30pm!
Described by Broadway World as the "David Bowie of cabaret," "slyly subversive" by The Wall Street Journal, and labeled the "male Marlene Dietrich" by The New York Times, Australian cabaret performer Kim David Smith conjures the glitter, doom, and decadence of 1920’s Berlin and beyond in his intimate celebration of Dietrich’s musical and cultural legacy: Mostly Marlene.
Debuting at Club Cumming in March 2020, “Mostly Marlene” (littered with more than a modest modicum of Minogue, Madonna, Minnelli, and more, m’kay!) enjoyed a sold-out Australian premiere at Alan Cumming’s 2021 Adelaide Cabaret Festival in June, more sold-out antics at Club Cumming on the Coast (Kennebunkport, Maine) in August 2021, and a celebrated return to NYC’s Club Cumming in September. Queer mega-muses collide with Marlene’s reimagined repertoire in Smith’s luxurious musical rearrangements, stravaging from Weimar Berlin, to Hollywood, through to the battlefields of Europe and into the stratosphere with Dietrich’s immortal "Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss.”
Musical direction is by award-winning accompanist Tracy Stark, with costumes by Miodrag Guberinic(Gaga, Minaj, Madonna, etc.).
"Smith doesn't impersonate Dietrich in any strict sense. Rather he channels her essence. Donning her trademark hat and tails, Smith, in fact, goes Dietrich one better as a man playing a woman playing a man. It is a Victor/Victoria trick where everyone is in on the ruse. This sort of androgyny is straight out of the Dietrich playbook...The wonderful, magical part is that Kim David Smith plays none of it for camp. He winks at the audience, to be sure, but the evening is an honest and loving tribute to Marlene, the world she inhabited, and the fans who adored her. He captures her signature style: the languid delivery, the fluid gestures, the almost predatory sexuality, and those breathtaking moments when she became so still and internal it was a little spooky. None of it feels natural, and that's precisely the point. Marlene Dietrich always let the audience in on the fact that they weren't watching reality, they were watching an inspired creation. Kim David Smith is inspired, indeed.” - Ricky Pope, Broadway World
