Ben Apfelbaum

BERNIE DIETER’S CLUB KABARETT : A GREAT NIGHT’S ENTERTAINMENT

 

First Fleet Park next to the MCA has been renamed Runaway Gardens for the duration of the Sydney Fringe Festival  which runs until 1st October.

The principal installation in the Gardens is the Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent which houses Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabarett until the 30th September.

This was a dazzling launch show for the Fringe. In her attempt to recreate the atmosphere in the Weimar Republic in Berlin in the period between the two World Wars.

Dieter herself is a cross between Liza Minelli’s Sally Bowles and Joel Grey’s Master of Ceremonies in the film ‘Cabaret’ but turned up to Volume 11.

The sexy, saucy songs and patter are kept at a frenetic pace of the acts that follow pumped along by a four piece Haus band ‘Sic’. The Kabarett whipped the crowd into a frenzy with each successive act, and  received standing ovations and thunderous foot stamping.

There were sword swallowers, aerialists, a gender bending pole dancer, a floating butterfly pulled up by her hair, who dropped her ‘wings’ to reveal herself to be completely in the nude.

It is traditional for cabaret shows to combine this element of burlesque to convey the atmosphere of debauchery that characterised pre World War 2 Berlin nightlife.

This was an outrageous and hilarious night of entertainment and left me utterly drained because this immersive experience was so spine tinglingly salacious and laugh out loud funny.

Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabarett runs until the 25th September 2022.

Review and photos by Ben Apfelbaum

Published by Ben Apfelbaum

My photography began when my father handed me the proverbial brownie box camera as a child. As cameras developed I went through Fujica and Olympus range finders graduating to my first single lens reflex camera, the Minolta SRT101, the latter being the greatest facilitator to my growth as a photographer. Digital photography has only added to this. I was a regular contributor to Camera Craft magazine (Australian Camera ) for over three years. During Australia’s Bicentennial year (1988) I made it a personal project to document the celebrations. This culminated in the creation of a book of my photos which was published in 1989. The book was called CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA and came with an accompanying calendar. My works have appeared in a number of publications including the coffee book entitled MY AUSTRALIA (1989), publisher Robertsbridge Severn. This book had a preface by the then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. I was a co-photographer on a book entitled SYDNEY- DISCOVER THE CITY with text written by Robert Treborlang. Major Mitchell Press was the publisher. Also for two years I was the photographer for calendars celebrating Sydney’s multicultural communities. The two calendars were entitled MULTICULTURAL SYDNEY. My work appeared in a group exhibition held at Sydney’s Town Hall pertaining to the diversity of life in South America to raise money for orphanages there. I have over one hundred photos stored in the New South Wales State Library archive. I had a solo exhibition held in 2007 entitled Ben’s Lens at the Sydney Jewish Museum which celebrated the vibrancy of the Sydney Jewish community. Some of these photos are on the Museum’s permanent display. I have exhibited internationally firstly at the Spruill Gallery in Atlanta Georgia, United States, and in an exhibition entitled Kosher and Co at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Currently I am a regular contributor to J-Wire and this esteemed publication. To celebrate the opening of a permanent Photography Gallery, the State Library of New South Wales selected 400 shots from its archive of over 2,000,000 images to display in the new gallery. An image of mine was plucked out of the multi million photo archive to be part of the inaugural exhibition.