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 fêtes the release of his new live album, “Mostly Marlene,” an intimately fabulous celebration of Dietrich’s musical and cultural legacy, with a live setlist conjuring the glitter, doom, and decadence of 1920’s Berlin and beyond.

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, Madonna, Broadway, film, and television). Debuting at Club Cumming in March 2020, Smith’s original iteration of “Mostly Marlene” (littered with more than a modest modicum of Minogue, Madonna, Minnelli, and more!) enjoyed a sold-out Australian premiere at Alan Cumming’s 2021 Adelaide Cabaret Festival, more sold-out antics at Club Cumming on the Coast (Kennebunkport, Maine, August 2021), a celebrated return to NYC’s Club Cumming in September and October of 2022, and performances at Joe’s Pub (2022, 2024), the Post Office Café (Provincetown; 2023, 2024) and Café Sabarsky at the Neue Galerie (2022, 2023, 2024).

March 2025 sees Smith rejoined by Matt Podd (accordion), Skip Ward (bass), and David Silliman (drums) for an exuberant and expanded “Mostly Marlene” programme at Joe’s Pub, in celebration of Smith’s brand-new live album: Mostly Marlene (recorded at Joe’s Pub in February of 2024, and mixed and mastered at Flux Studios NYC).

Releasing worldwide, March 21, 2024, Mostly Marlene’s 21 lush tracks showcase Kim’s live, loving musical tributes to Marlene Dietrich and her decades of music-and-magic-making.

Alongside Smith’s performance of Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam” (in an original French translation by cabarettist Gay Marshall), his barn-storming all-German rendition of Kander & Ebb’s “Cabaret,” and special live appearances by New York cabaret legend, Sidney Myer, and pop wunderkind, Bright Light Bright Light, “Mostly Marlene” also features special, bonus-track studio-duets with celestial juggernauts of the queer cabaret pantheon: the legendary Joey Arias, the extraordinary Charles Busch, Australia’s stratospheric soprano, Ali McGregor, and in an extra-special appearance, Smith’s own darling mother, Linda Randall, joins Kim in the studio in a tender rendition of Friedrich Hollaender’s “Eine Kleine Sehnsucht.”  

"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. 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. 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

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Photo Credit: Da Ping Luo