A recurrent act on the NYC cabaret scene, Australian-born New York-based actor and singer Kim David Smith makes a virtual return with his holiday hit A Wery Weimar Christmas for two nights this week on Stellar. Streaming from its 2019 world-premiere home at Club Cumming (the East Village alt-nightclub co-owned by and named for Tony-winning star of the stage and screen Alan Cumming, which has transitioned to operating online throughout the ongoing COVID-19 shutdown), the naughty and nice Christmas “Kabarett fantasia” reimagines the sounds, stylings, and mood of Berlin in the 1920s, from a “fabulously queer” post-modern perspective.
Presented by Smith and Club Cumming Productions, the show is designed to evoke the subversive glamour, decadence, and gloom of the Weimar era (which seems particularly timely in the midst of the current pandemic and socio-political unrest), as recreated in Bob Fosse’s 1972 Oscar-winning film Cabaret and Kander and Ebb’s multiple Tony Award-winning 1966 musical that inspired it (of which the artist has been a fan since his teen years, and in which Cumming starred three times as the emcee – a role that Smith also played in Hunter Foster’s 2016 production at Massachusetts’ Cape Playhouse).
The set list, with music direction by Tracy Stark, not only features the songs of Kurt Weill, Friedrich Hollaender, and Mischa Spoliansky (Jewish cabaret composers who fled Berlin during the rise of Nazism), but also pop favorites of our own time, including selections by Smith’s Australian homeland muse Kylie Minogue, in an intoxicating mix of German and English, then and now, risqué hedonism and playful Yuletide cheer. Smith will be joined by special guests Natalie Joy Johnson (Kinky Boots; Legally Blonde: the Musical), drag queen and singer Alexis Michelle (RuPaul’s Drag Race), and Brooklyn singer-songwriter Boy Radio (whose album Pop That – with a contemporary techno-pop homage to “La Vie en Rose” entitled “Life in Pink” – was released in 2016) in bringing a bit of cabaret intimacy to this year’s socially distanced holidays.
Kim told me that he’s “so excited to be reviving A Wery Weimar Christmas this year, after last year’s debut at Club Cumming, even though we’ll be distanced. I feel so grateful to be ‘sharing’ the stage with three of my favorite performers, and some of the dearest people I’ve ever met. Natalie Joy Johnson is a complete powerhouse and utter delight, Drag Race’s Alexis Michelle is glamour and old-school Broadway incarnate, and Boy Radio is fabulous and tender beyond belief! Being able to celebrate the holidays in my own tongue-in-cheek fashion (think Krampus singing Christmas ballads) with these amazing friends, and with Tracy Stark, my brilliant music director, helps make Christmastide 2020 feel a little less bewildering.”
Kim David Smith’s A Wery Weimar Christmas streams from Club Cumming at 8 pm on Wednesday, December 16, and Friday, December 18. For tickets (priced at $15) and viewing, visit Stellar.
