A deeply theatrical, flamboyant cabaret reimagining of Kylie Minogue’s biggest pop anthems by queer cabaret spectre Hersh Dagmarr and piano virtuoso Karen Newby, – the perfect act of queer worship to kick off London Pride Weekend in style. Tickets here.
What first drew you towards the world of Cabaret as a performer?
Growing up in France, I was surrounded by cabaret music and music hall from the start — not just as a cultural backdrop but as something living in my household. People around me were always singing chansons.
Cabaret is a French invention, after all, and that lineage — from Edith Piaf to Charles Trenet, Yves Montand to Charles Aznavour, Francoise Hardy or even Catherine Ringer (my favorite French singer of all time)— shaped how I think about performance: the presentation, the artistry, the artifice, the storytelling.
But what truly compelled me was how cabaret became politically charged in Weimar Berlin — a form of resistance, dancing on the brink of catastrophe. That era haunts everything I do. My stage persona is the phantom of a French cabaret artist who disappeared in Weimar Berlin in the 1930s. Nobody quite knows how.
There’s often a wonderful balance of glamour, vulnerability and humour within your work. How do you approach creating that atmosphere on stage?
I always start from a story, a narrative I’m trying to convey. The atmosphere tends to follow from that: if the story is honest, the vulnerability and humour are unavoidable.
The Hersh character is central to that balance — he’s a phantom, a souvenir from a bygone cabaret era, and that tension between comedy, glamour and darkness is essentially built into him. He’s tragic, absurd and fierce in equal measure, which makes the whole thing somehow poetic.
Glamour, to me, is less about opulence than precision. The grooming, the detail, the finish — I think of it almost as a uniform. You put it on and it changes how you carry yourself, how you command the space. It’s armour.
Elegance in general is something I highly value and I seek — it’s harder to define, a kind of grace I aspire to rather than claim. And it has nothing to do with class or money or being stuck up. Someone like Courtney Love has it. It’s not elitist — it’s a way of moving through the world with intention. And humour, actually.
Where do you tend to find inspiration when developing new work or performances?
Inspiration comes mainly from my own existential, ever-recurring questions — the ones that don’t resolve, just resurface in different forms.
The Weimar era is always the crucial reference point — that brief, incandescent parenthesis of time, that flash of intense light before total darkness. It’s where Dagmarr flourished and where he got lost. Literally.
Old films too — from the 1920s to the 1950s. The craft, artistry, the constraint, the light, the hair, the unapologetic camp and drama. The larger than life performances. A certain quest for a dream, an idea of perfection — the attempt to transcend reality entirely.
I’m also a total 1980s soap opera geek by the way! — the last relic of Hollywood’s golden age, and all that glamour, melodrama and artifice feeds directly into what I do.
But however much the themes shift, I gravitate around the same territories: belongingness, an aversion to — and desire for — invisibility, and the ever-present mystery of time passing.
Cabaret has historically been a space for freedom, reinvention and self-expression. What does the artform allow you to explore that other spaces perhaps do not?
Cabaret is the only space where all the contradictions can coexist — tragedy and comedy, the political and the absurd, the deeply personal and the theatrical. And there is no fourth wall. The relationship with the audience is immediate, confrontational, intimate.
The Dagmarr persona thrives in that environment. Cabaret has always sheltered outsiders and dissidents, and that queer, subversive history runs through everything I do.
It also gives me licence to mix registers freely — from Kurt Weill to Kylie Minogue — and have it all make sense.
“Dagmarr’s Cabaret- A Ghost’s Story” at Love Affair Basement on 4th June brings together songs from across my themed shows. “Minogueus Sanctus-Hersh Dagmarr sings Kylie Minogue” follows at the Crazy Coqs on 3rd July, and my all French Chanson show “Dagmarr’s Dimanche: Paris When It Sizzles” on 23rd August.
In cabaret, it all makes perfect sense!
What do you hope audiences feel when they leave one of your performances?
Slightly haunted, a little glamorous, and definitely believing in the great beyond — now that they know that somewhere, stuck in 1930s Berlin, a French cabaret poltergeist is still preparing for his big comeback.
And if they leave humming — that’s the ultimate proof that there is something after.