Fabulett 1933 – Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Fabulett 1933 continues at theSpace @ Surgeons Hall, Edinburgh until 27 August 2022 (7-13, 15-27).

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

A toast. To trans rights, to queer life, to progressive Germany. Difference must be celebrated. But it’s 1933 and less than a year ago, the chief of Berlin Police announced a clampdown on the city’s “depraved nightlife”. It’s the end for cabaret bar Fabulett.

Michael Trauffer (writer) is Felix, the Emcee who, in a blend of narration and song, tells us about the club’s rich past; the clientele of misfits and artisans who made new lives for themselves in sexually liberated Berlin. As an eight year old boy, who wore his mother’s dresses, Felix has never fitted in… until now, which makes the closing of the club all the more poignant. Having been given an ‘invisibility hat’ by his mother, he is visible for the first time and it’s too much to give up.

Trauffer cleverly combines his own original songs with contemporary material. It’s hard to imagine that a song extolling the virtues of being masculine or feminine or neither or both, was written in 1921. Harder still to believe that members of the Third Reich who had frequented Fabulett and bars like it, went on to persecute their former lovers.

This is not Kander and Ebb style Cabaret. It’s altogether more rough and raw. Trauffer embodies the spirit of the period well and his sometimes reedy singing suits the late-night basement feel of the club. The message is clear and Trauffer’s anger is potent. We must never become complacent. Equalities can disappear.

Steven Wren