Gloriously unhinged, Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabarett is a riot of raunchiness where weird and wonderful side show acts come out to play.
Following a standout run at the Adelaide Fringe, Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabarett has returned to Melbourne for an encore season with even more pizzazz. A celebrated fixture on the international festival circuit, the production has played acclaimed seasons from London’s West End to Edinburgh and beyond, with its 2025 Melbourne run earning three Green Room Award nominations and a win for Outstanding Ensemble.
Built in 1880, the Meat Market carried a faintly illicit, almost carnal glamour lingering in the old bones of the place. In the air hung a mischievous, East of Berlin seediness, a space where the audience was encouraged, quite literally, to let their freak flag fly.
Within the Cobblestone Pavilion, ironwork curled and framed the action beneath a looming circus truss, giving the room both grandeur and grit. Performers moved from the stage to the runway and into the crowd, collapsing the divide. Here, audience interaction was inevitable as proximity bred complicity, particularly for those seated at the intimate cabaret tables and ringside seats.
Transformed into a Spiegeltent, the venue was saturated in red light, the walls adorned with German and English phrases spraypainted in stark black and crimson. Phrases like "Die Nacht Gehört Uns" (the night belongs to us) and “Zieh Deine Haut Aus Und Tanze” (take off your skin and dance) cut through the atmosphere alongside declarations such as “No Gods only Glitter”. Paraphrasing Bertolt Brecht, one line declared, “Art is not a mirror, it is a hammer.”
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Even the bathrooms extended the experience. Marked “Stage Door” in neon lights, their entry was draped in lingerie, while inside, mirrors were tagged with reclaimed insults, words like Rebel, Freak, and Weirds, tripped of shame and reframed as defiance.
Club Kabarett pulses with the aftershock energy of Weimar Berlin, a cultural scene born of the wreckage of World War I and the Spanish flu pandemic, which embraced lavishness as both escapism and protest. In a post-COVID-19 world, similar impulses have resurfaced. Audiences are hungry for the visceral, for experiences that feel immediate and just a little transgressive. A century on, Club Kabarett taps into that lineage, and the result is a spectacle that refuses to behave.
Known as the “Queen of Weimar punk,” Dieter has staked her claim as a defining presence in modern cabaret, leaving a trail of glitter and decadent debauchery in her wake. Born in Köln to German and Australian heritage, she was raised on tales of her grandmother, who grew up in a travelling circus and was smuggled into West Germany beneath a pile of sequined costumes.
Presiding as the evening's flamboyant ringleader, the self-proclaimed “Mistress of Mayhem” held the room with charming menace. Her voice shifted from sultry to powerfully theatrical as she moved between covers and originals, including Into My Arms by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, a surprising moment of tenderness amid the excess.
Around her, a ragtag ensemble of misfits emerged: a pole-dancing, hair-hanging rocket scientist, a seductress whose lightsaber routine would make George Lucas blush, and a drag diva who redefined the concept of a smash cake.
Kicking off the chaos was Melissa Lee, a former aerospace engineer turned gravity-defying circus artist. Now, a viral TikTok sensation who has previously shared the stage with Snoop Dogg, she arrived fresh from London’s West End, balancing grace and ferocity in equal measure. Lee opened on the pole before later returning for an unnerving hair-suspension routine to the tune of Scissor Sisters’ Filthy/Gorgeous. Moving with control and precision, she combined elegance with a darkly hypnotic, otherworldly edge. The result was one hell of a facelift.
Draped in a long fur coat, cigarette in hand, tap dancer Caleb Cameron struck a striking silhouette. Ribbons of smoke coiled around him as he moved, each step laced with nonchalant charm. A luminary of the Parisian cabaret world with pedigree from the Crazy Horse Paris, Cameron delivered technical finesse and mesmerising command. He dazzled with playful, kinetic brilliance, each tap landing like a flirtation, teasing the rhythm as layers of clothing slipped away in a game of strip jazz. The crescendo came during Darude’s Sandstorm, his footwork surging into a frenzied tap barrage.
Billed as “the human heatwave”, Jacqueline Furey arrived on stage as a lingerie-clad sword-swallowing, fire-breathing dragon of a woman whose performance was part spectacle, part provocation. Set to the sounds of Prince and Arctic Monkeys, her routine blurred the line between danger and allure. Whipping flames and swallowing steel, Furey slinked across the stage with predatory ease.
Melbourne-based, Ethiopian-born contortionist Soliana Ersie delivered an act that defied anatomy itself, unfolding through a series of impossible, sculptural poses that held the room in a kind of suspended disbelief. Her body bent with extraordinary control and strength, each movement dissolving the usual boundaries of form and function. To the sounds of Dieter’s cackling laughter, her limbs threaded and curved with unnatural fluidity.
A seasoned aerialist and world-renowned circus performer, Jarred Dewey brought a refined poise to the trapeze. With a resume that includes contemporary circus companies Circa and Circus Oz, each swing and release was executed with assured precision. Clad in tight black shorts bearing the evil eye and bedazzled blue platform heels, he transformed the apparatus into a gender-bending device of theatrical contrast, blending masculine strength with stylised glamour.
Landscape tradie by day and drag queen by night, the award-winning avant-garde cabaret artist Iva Rosebud was every bit the rambunctious showgirl. Weaving comedy and mischief into every moment, Rosebud performed an unforgettable rendition of Édith Piaf’s La Vie en rose before abandoning all decorum in a finale involving a birthday cake and a birthday suit that left the audience gasping with laughter.
Amid all the flash and anarchy, Club Kabarett is anchored by something real: a celebration of non-conformity, individuality, and unguarded human connection. Yes, the acts will leave you gobsmacked, but it’s the feeling in the room, unexpected and disarming as the crowd collectively lets its guard down, that lingers long after the glitter settles.
