Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabarett
Bernie Dieter
Genre: Burlesque, Cabaret, Circus
Venue: Underbelly@ Circus Hub on the Meadows
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
An evening of Circus Acts with a live band and our extraordinary hostess, Bernie Dieter. There is nothing new or fanciful here, just circus done very well and packaged in a way that is hugely entertaining for all who are invited to be there. And that includes EVERYONE.
Review
As a package, this is quite superior. It allows everybody to feel not only welcome but relaxed in an environment where you are terrified in equal measure. Several acts appear to sword swallow, fire eat, to show how they balance, creatively use a single trapeze, along with a hilarious drag act that ends up nakedly and unashamedly doing something with a cake – it will stay with me for far longer than any cake ever has in the past.
This is just delightful.
By the end, people were on their feet and were giving a fantastic response to a provocateur who knows how to work her audience. From the very beginning, she wanders between us and finds people to provoke and become part of the overall joy that she’s attempting to spread. That’s not to say that there’s not a serious message in here, because when it comes to Roe vs. Wade, there is a massively serious song and a dress.
Dieter provocatively reassures us and at the same time thrill us with the fear that she may come and pick on us to be part of her Kabarett. At the beginning she picks upon three men who unceremoniously have to lift and bring her back on stage – it is done with such consummate ease you feel you are in for a treat – then she treats us a lot more.
Props used are exactly as you would expect for a show of this vitality with especially interesting performances from the contortionist, which I thought was the best of it all. The ability to bend yourself into the various poses that she managed is one thing, but then to give us a physical narrative is something else.
The fire breathing also with a degree of nudity which added to the bierkeller 1920’s feel of it all, gave us more risqué elements, allowed the burlesque to be engaged with the circus and then heightened and enhanced the overall spectacle.
The band were hot, on point and that rock element managed to elevate both tempo and temperature.
It is described as salacious, and it is certainly that. There is more than a degree of debauchery. There certainly is that, but it is more than just spectacular. Bernie Dieter knows how to package something and it’s a bit like Christmas where you get everything you wanted, but not necessarily in a package that has enthralled everybody else. But for you, you want to dress up in that finery. You want to take the bow and the wrapping paper with the glitz and the glamour and find the fairy dust that’s somewhere hidden in the back of your cupboard and throw it on top of yourself. That to me is Club Kabarett.
This is a company, not just at the top of their game, but should be at the top of your list. When it comes to early evening opportunities to sit back and be utterly terrified and this is an exuberant display of utter acceptance. What joy.
