Award-winning cabaret star and actor Kim David Smith returns to New York’s Club Cumming on Sunday, December 14th for his fabulously queer annual holiday celebration, A Wery Weimar Christmas, courting festive cheer amid the glitter, doom, and decadence of 1920s Berlin. Featuring the original holiday tunes “A Wery Merry Weimar Christmas,” and “Don’t Let Krampus Catch You Crying”, Rudolph and Santa collide with Weill, Hollaender, Spoliansky, and more in this Minogue-Minnelli-and-Marlene-drenched salute to the Yuletide season. With music direction by award-winning accompanist Tracy Stark, Smith is traditionally joined by special guests, including Boy Radio, Bright Light Bright Light, and Smith’s own “cabaret father” Sidney Myer.
Earlier this year, Smith released his latest concert album, Mostly Marlene, which sees the artist bring his signature charm and wit, not to mention his stunning vocals, to a record filled with delectable interpretations of songs associated with Marlene Dietrich, as well as the other divas in his “holy trinity”, Liza Minnelli and Kylie Minogue. Mostly Marlene boasts a sparkling array of musical friends who joined Smith on stage for duets along with bonus studio-recorded tracks with Charles Busch, Joey Arias, Ali McGregor, and Smith’s mother Linda Randall.
Ahead of this year’s A Wery Weimar Christmas, Kim David Smith speaks with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann about his vision for the show, his own festive traditions, and why Judy Garland’s original version of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” is the gayest holiday song ever. With exclusive photography for The Queer Review by Steven Menendez.
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: First all, we have to talk about these gorgeous new photographs of you by Steven Menendez. I love the red.
Kim David Smith: “Oh, yes, that vampiric, Padam red is so divine! Steven and I were coming up with the vibe for this shoot and I told him that I wanted it to conjure the look of an old 1930s Hollywood studio star who’d just been pulled off the set for a calendar that was being thrown together or some postcards. The gown I’m wearing came about because I was doing a new show of torch songs and it is my personal belief that you can’t sing torch songs without wearing a gown. It’s forbidden. So I got the gown commissioned by my amazing friend Fritz Masten. Then once the gown came off and things got more playful, it turned into Gwen Verdon’s OnlyFans. As always with Steven, it was a fabulous day in the studio.”
What do the holidays mean to you and how did A Wery Weimar Christmas come about?
“The holidays are very much a family centred thing for me. Having grown up in Australia, Christmas time was when the family gathered because we don’t have Thanksgiving. Now that I’m living here in the States, the absence of my family around the holidays profoundly resonates in my spirit because I don’t get to see my amazing mother—who I duet with on my latest album—and the rest of my tight-knit little family. So the holidays have become about gathering with my found family.”
“2019 was the first appearance of A Wery Weimar Christmas which was partly born out of me wanting to have something to look forward to at this time of the year. It’s about me inviting my found family up on stage with me and celebrating them. My cabaret father, Sidney Myer, comes along every year to do a couple of songs. He does this amazing Jewish-centric “Santa Baby”, which is to die for, and he always pairs something sweet with it. The astonishing Boy Radio is another artist who has joined us every single year to melt us with his voice as though we were sleet and snow. We usually get a couple of holiday orphans roped in too, along with new friends whose voices I want to amplify.”
“This year, the astonishing Sarah Bowden will join us which I’m really excited about. She’s a fellow Australian who lived in Germany for years and did the German language tours of shows like A Chorus Line. We met earlier this year at an audition. I didn’t book the job, but I did meet a kindred spirit in Sarah. We bonded over the Friedrich Hollaender song I was auditioning with that day.”
“The show is all about my irreverence for Christmas. I love what’s borrowed from its pagan origins and I very much make fun of myself being an atheist at Christmas time. It’s all about being too poor for presents, too atheist for Jesus, and too naughty for Santa. I always open the show with Kurt Weill’s “Pirate Jenny”, but with added sleigh bells, which cheers the song up significantly.”
How did you come up with the Weimar theme of the show?
“The idea for it was born in 2019 when it felt like, here comes the Weimar Republic again. Of course, none of us knew that it would return for real in 2025. So, unfortunately, it feels more relevant this year than ever, but it’s truly a joyous evening. It’s about love, celebrating friendship, and not taking anything—including Christmas and Hanukkah—seriously in the least. Everything has a slightly creepy, menacing sheen, but there’s also so much love shining through my black leather Santa outfit.”
“As much as I want to insist upon the Dickensian darkness of this show, I also want to transmit how fun it is. People are often weeping with laughter. It’s bright and cheerful and sits in a very Threepenny Opera kind of place. It’s meant to have that sort of dichotomy because we find oursleves living in these atrocious times. I’m not up there singing “White Christmas” and faux-cheerfully “Ho Ho Ho-ing”. It’s acknowledging the darkness, but there is some escapism through the music. It’s also about the true reason for the season, which is one another.”
Do you see your desire to bring found family together reflected in your audience now that this show has become an annual tradition?
“Oh, absolutely. It’s wonderful to see people who were at the inaugural event return every year. It feels like family throughout the room, not just who’s on stage, including our kind and patient Club Cumming bartenders. Then there’s Tracy Stark at the piano, my absolute best friend. She married my husband and I. Not in the throuple sense. She got ordained online to do it! She’s a special part of my found family. So sharing this night with her, the audience, and strangers—new friends—feels very much in the spirit of the holidays.”
Tracy is also your musical director, what’s that collaboration like?
“It’s a collaboration that is further explored and cemented through our original holiday songs. I love writing lyrics, but for some reason the mise en scène that really gets me mentally activated is the holiday season. It’s because I don’t take the holidays seriously and think it’s all very silly. My original songs in the show are “A Wery Weimar Christmas” and “Don’t Let Krampus Catch you Crying”. Christmas lyrics usually come to me when I’m on the nude beach in Provincetown. It’ll be the middle of the day with sun beating down while I’m lying naked under an umbrella and suddenly Christmas lyrics will flood my brain and these songs begin to evolve into something that appears on stage in December. I always close out with the gayest Christmas song, which is Judy Garland’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” from Meet Me in St. Louis.”
“There are so many holiday songs about jingling bells with good cheer and to that I say, ‘Hooray!’ But I think “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is pertinently perfect for our current times because it is about gathering together, gathering yourself and your strengths, and muddling through somehow and always forward into the next year. I’m not one of those people who dwells on the past. I’m all about forward momentum. Muddling through somehow is the only thing we can do. As queer people we have always muddled through somehow and we will continue to do so.”
What’s your favourite Christmas movie?
“It’s hands down Batman Returns. Tim Burton’s sensibilities around Christmas very much inform A Wery Weimar Christmas in terms of its style and its sense of it being Christmas despite the terrors. Actually, if I were to have a tagline for my show it would be that, “Christmas despite the terrors”! I don’t know a gay guy who isn’t Selena Kyle as portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer. The transition from Selena into Catwoman is one of the most delicious things I’ve ever seen on screen. Once she’s Catwoman, she’s Catwoman. For me, it’s all about the transformation and the way that she starts to visibly unravel throughout the film. By the end, the stitches are coming apart and her hair is sticking out. It’s fabulous.”
“When I got a divorce, I leaned into Michelle Pfeiffer’s portrayal of Selena Kyle so hard because here is someone—doesn’t matter how pretty she is, doesn’t matter how pretty you are, Kim—who is dealing with all the things. She might be hanging on by the barest thread, but she is dealing with it in her own inventive way. Taking that approach to my divorce is what got me through all the things I needed to get through in 2016, which was quite the year.”
Lastly, all Kim David Smith wants for Christmas is…
“The threadbareness of A Wery Weimar Christmas is angled towards anti-consumerism because what’s glorious about Christmas is the gathering and the music. It’s not about, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to get a gift for my dog sitter’s husband’s mother.’ It becomes insane and I don’t even have a dog! My husband and I set ourselves a $150 budget for gifts and with that you fill up the stocking as best you can. It’s about being mindful. I’m down for homemade too. For me, Christmas is black. I do black wrapping paper, black ribbon; everything’s black. My mother got us these lovely black stockings because she’s so on board with my silliness.”
“So all I want for Christmas is a glass of champagne, a smile and some time with my loved ones. That’s literally it. Our course, if anyone’s desperate to get me something for Christmas, then buy a fucking ticket, bitch! Gift yourself a ticket to A Wery Weimar Christmas and we will have a glass of champagne together.”
By James Kleinmann
Tickets for Kim David Smith’s A Wery Weimar Christmas at Club Cumming on Sunday, December 14th at 8pm are on sale now at Eventbrite.com.
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