Kim David Smith Invites You to a Tiergarten Party

In February of 2022 I went to see a show called Mostly Marlene at Joe’s Pub in New York. The show starred Kim David Smith who has been described by the New York Times as the male Marlene Dietrich. And for good reason. His cabaret show finds the Australian dressed in leather tuxedo singing songs made famous by Dietrich as well as songs by other artists. His specialty is songs from the Weimar Republic era.

As part of Carnegie Hall’s Dancing on the Precipice series, Smith is the host/emcee for Tiergarten at the Great Hall under St. Mary’s Church in New York City. The show will be performed April 17th – 19th and is produced and directed by Andrew Ousley for his Death of Classical series of innovative concerts around New York.

Last month I spoke with Smith about Tiergarten, the topicality of the music he loves from almost a century ago and some of the artists who inspire him. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To watch the full interview with Smith, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: What was it that Andrew told you about what Tiergarten would be and what intrigued you most about this concept for the show?

I spend my entire life, every waking moment of this little life, in a permanent audition for any random production of Cabaret that might crop up. When he approached me with Tiergarten, I was like, well, this is exactly what I do myself. Except someone else is putting the meat and potatoes behind it. It’s his crazy, fabulous ideas. I was sold within moments. It’s going to be so much fun.

What inspires you most about this era in music?

The parallels to today are just, like, absolutely bonkers. Things were absolutely chaotic in the day-to-day of folks during that period. But in that chaos, so much art flourished. It was really a time for the weirdos – as I like to call them. I have always felt that I’ve got a spiritual foot in that time. I began to research and started to put together my own shows. Friedrich Hollaender flooded into my awareness. Kurt Weill, of course. Rudolf Nelson. I was starting to really investigate the actual music of this time.

I keep coming back to Cabaret again and again. To me, [John] Kander and [Fred] Ebb do the most marvelous job of like of keeping a foot in the doorway to that time. What’s marvelous about the music of that time, specifically coming out of Germany, is that it was so influenced by American jazz. But as it crossed the Atlantic, it just distorted and then turned more expressive, disrupted and deformed. I just love it.

There was all kinds of great art coming out of that period. We’re in a pretty crappy time in history.

Do you see great art coming out of this time in history?

People who I look up to, my peers, are really getting out there and making amazing cabaret. People like Cole Escola has just set New York on fire with Oh Mary! Charles Busch’s new play, Ibsen’s Ghost is out. People like Joey Arias has not stopped. Justin Vivian Bond. These people are really just throwing out astonishing career best works. Taylor Mac. Le Gateau Chocolat and Mama Alto from Australia. Just like punk people doing these extraordinary, marvelous career best works in this mad time. Audiences are just really seeking connection with people who are really putting themselves out there. Because we are, as under the actual Nazi rule, I think people were being put very tightly into tiny little boxes, and if you stray out of them, well… And it’s very much what folks are trying to do now is putting us all into tiny little boxes so they can tidy us and organize us away. 

I had a conversation with playwright Gloria Calderón Kellett recently who said that one of the reasons she feels that we have started to do that is because we no longer share the same viewing habits. It’s not like there’s a Friends that everybody watches each week where, no matter who you are, you come together around the proverbial water cooler. You have this shared thing that you can talk about and listen to what other people have to say. The loss of that is really detrimental to how we all get along as a society. It sounds like that may be a reason why we seek out some of these shows you’re talking about and some of these performers

I do think escapism is paramount. But there’s really no main street for having the same or even a really similar experience. I think there is something missing from at least how things used to be in the 90s and 2000s where everyone was watching The Sopranos on a Sunday evening and then having their little freak out like, oh my God, Adriana’s dead or whatever.

Cabaret is clearly a big influence for you, but how did that lead into explorations of people like Marlene Dietrich and Friedrich Hollaender?

Both of them are very much hand in hand. I received a Judy Garland compilation CD when I was five from one of my gay uncles. Dietrich and Friedrich Hollander, they came in around 15. My father gave me a Dietrich biography and I was like, who is this commanding woman? I have had a lifelong obsession with powerful, charismatic women of a certain age. Then starting to get a feel of her from recordings. Also the unlikeliness of her voice is just so glued to me. 

Falling in Love Again is, of course, Friedrich Hollaender. Then you’ve got the remarkable songs in A Foreign Affair where he actually is accompanying her doing [the song] Black Market, which is, to me, just mind blowing. 

Are there challenges for you in not being the whole show, as opposed to being the master of ceremonies and sprinkling in your magic throughout whatever this extravaganza Tiergarten will be?

You cannot underestimate the power of a good cameo. What I’m doing in Tiergarten is going to be vastly beyond the cameo. It’s to be able to pop in and out and just sprinkle a little pixie dust here and there. It’s a real gift to be on stage the whole time. I thoroughly enjoy it. With Andrew we’ve managed to hook in a couple of friends of mine into the proceedings. One person is Pearls Daily who is one of my most favorite burlesque performers. An absolute legend. So intelligent, so magical. I couldn’t underline the word magical more when I talk about Pearls. We’ve got her doing something so silly. For me, Tiergarten is a really, really good, big, fabulous opportunity to celebrate others.

Many women from Ute Lemper to Meow Meow and more are doing Berlin cabaret songs, but there aren’t a lot of men who are singing Berlin cabaret songs. What kind of challenges and opportunities does that give you to put a different spin, a different voice, to songs that are closely associated with women?

I guess right now there’s not a ton of us kicking around the Weimar stuff. It’s never really been a problem because I gravitate towards songs written for women or intended for women anyway. It’s so natural for me to sing about man as a woman on stage. I just really don’t feel a specific gender presence. When Tracy Stark, my accompanist, my chief conspirator for the stage, when she’s at the keys I just melt into this anthemic sort of otherness that just sort of exists. And maybe otherness is really the word for it.

The website for this particular event says the program traces a path backwards in time, exploring historic moments of societal madness. Is there any particular societal madness going on today that either most intrigues you or most scares you, that you think is an important part of what this show is going to explore?

Every time we encounter a historic period we’re like, oh, this was the disastrous mindset of this period. It is exactly the same way. No matter where we are, no matter where we find ourselves, we’re like, oh, that’s familiar.

Kind of the overarching theme of the show is here it comes again. It’s very much Shirley Bassey and the Propellerheads: It’s all just a little bit of history repeating. For me, it’s like the witch hunts, the Inquisition. We’re in a very blame-y time looking for these firebrands or trying to ignite the, for lack of a better word, packets beneath us.

You mentioned what you believe audiences are wanting right now. What do you need out of performance to make Kim David Smith happy?

I only ever want to enter through the crowd. I like to be near people. I just need to be in amongst the people I contact. Really direct presence/engagement, I need that. The pandemic really made me go, wow, I need that.

I seems like Tiergarten will allow you that opportunity in spades.

Oh, for sure. My legs are going to be busy. 

To watch the full interview with Kim David Smith, please go HERE.

For tickets and more information for TIERGARTEN, please click on the link built into the name of the event in this sentence or on the date you are interested in exploring: April 17th, 18th and 19th.

Main Photo: Kim David Smith in “Mostly Marlene” (Courtesy of the Artist)