Ute Lemper (61) was Sally Bowles in the Paris production of Cabaret and Velma Kelly in the 90s revival of Chicago.
This performance is based on a three-hour phone call with Marlene Dietrich in 1988. This was at the time when Lemper was making headlines around the globe. She successfully delivers a nuanced impression of her voice, character and wicked sense of humour.
Lemper also summons Dieterich’s hatred of Hitler and the Nazis. There is a fantasy where she is invited to meet the Nazi leader and wonders if it would be possible to kill him. This is all told by the woman once described as “the new Marlene”.
The Nazis in turn weren’t fans of the oppositional energy she could summon on the songs performed tonight such as Falling In Love Again. Post-war Dietrich would star in Judgement At Nuremberg (1961) alongside Burt Lancaster and Spencer Tracy playing the widow of a Nazi general. The film is widely regarded as a masterpiece, and allowed Dietrich to say a line that summoned exactly how she felt: “We hated Hitler, I want you to know that and he hated us. That’s why it’s so ironic, what happened. It was political murder. You can see that, can’t you?”
It’s almost 50 years to the day since Dietrich arrived in Edinburgh to perform a run of dates at the Lyceum with Burt Bacharach and his Orchestra for a clutch of cabaret shows for that year’s Edinburgh Festival.
Lemper refers to the affair with Bacharach as if falling in love with her was just a matter of fact. I remember one classmate at school who told me his grandad had seen Dietrich at the Lyceum. His gran didn’t approve, so it was kept quiet until his ticket stub was found in the inside pocket of his suit.
It’s hard to believe as you walk around Edinburgh today, but Dietrich was regarded as dangerous and subversive. Tonight Lemper summoned the same sultry, melancholic energy from the period. She brings that phone call to life and left Lemper with the gift of carrying on her legacy. She does it well.
Ute Lemper, Rendezvous with Marlene
The Queens Hall, Edinburgh
