Naughty Berlin Dea Birkett
Christopher Isherwood wrote Goodbye to Berlin, inspiration for Cabaret, 80 years ago. Dea Birkett dances in Sally Bowles’s footsteps
‘Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome ...’ I’m sitting at a tiny round table under a big top, popping pumpernickel canapés. The Tipi am Kanzleramt tented theatre is just a tassel twirl from the Reichstag, and its revived stage version of Cabaret is as stirring and mournful as Liza Minnelli’s.
Sipping on my gin cocktail, I imagine myself back over 80 years, when the Second World War was just a whisper along Berlin’s cobbled streets. Then the capital’s alternative after-dark cabaret scene lured hopeful artistes and pleasure-seeking audiences to its gay clubs, transvestite bars and erotic performances.
I’m a former showgirl; feathers and fishnets still shimmy in my soul. So I’d come to Berlin in the spirit of Sally Bowles, seeking out what might remain of the libertine Cabaret legacy.
The Tipi’s maroon-draped, darkened big top, dripping with glittering chandeliers, was close to the decadent variety performances of the Golden Twenties. But not close enough.
My quest had begun in the leafy residential Schöneberg district where, 90 years ago, Christopher Isherwood arrived. He was a 24-year-old would-be writer, single, sexually confused, broke and lost. Ten years later, in 1939, he wrote Goodbye to Berlin, his semiautobiographical novel set in Weimar Germany, on which Cabaret is based.
I took a walking tour with Brendan Nash, historian of the Weimar era.
‘The only constant in the Weimar era was change,’ he said. In the turbulent late Twenties and early Thirties, artists experimented and clubs for outsiders of all kinds flourished. Marlene Dietrich grew up as a child of this neighbourhood, the daughter of a philanderer who died of syphilis when she was just two. In this colourful corner of 20th-century Berlin, Isherwood became its chronicler.
‘There was very little animosity towards gays and lesbians in the 1930s, because there was so much else to worry about.’ Schöneberg is still Berlin’s gay district, where the Romeo und Romeo café openly sells rainbow vegan cake without any fear of attack.
The overhead railway – the iconic image of the city in many spy films – rattled so loudly that I could barely hear Nash’s astute commentary. He guided me to 17 Nollendorfstrasse where, on the second floor, Isherwood rented a room.
The whole flat now goes for €1,400 per month, a bargain by British standards. It’s currently available for rent; Nash shows me a copy of the floor plan, as if I might be interested in moving in. There’s a small plaque in memory of the author on its unassuming frontage; an estate agent would call this street ‘respectable’.
At this moment, Nash quotes Isherwood with rather different views on the area: ‘In Berlin, I wasn’t expected just to have sex. I was expected to specialise.’
Later that night, I returned to Schöneberg to hang out at the Sally Bowles café bar, dedicated to preserving the Cabaret spirit. Not only were the barmen dressed in 1920s style; so were the customers – the men in bow ties and braces, the women twirling long strings of pearls and fur boas. Sometimes, I’d hear a listless tinkle from the baby grand piano at the back of the bar.
But it felt more like an estate agents’ night out – perhaps this crowd were celebrating securing tenants at 17 Nollendorfstrasse. Elsie wouldn’t have been welcomed here. ‘And when I go…’
My guidebook to Berlin was the Cabaret playlist. I entered the art nouveau Chamaeleon Theatre humming, ‘Maybe this time... I’ll be lucky...’ in my search for a scene that would have captivated Isherwood.
The beautifully restored Chamaeleon promised ‘variety in the tradition of the 1920s’, creating ‘a sensual, non-verbal pleasure’, as you sit in cabaret-style seating in the ballroom, watching circus of the most cutting-edge kind.
Women twisted their bodies into extraordinary postures; men stuck their heads inside filled fish bowls. The art nouveau decorations, the waitresses fluttering between the seats offering drinks, and the gasps from the audience brought me closer to Cabaret than anywhere else.
The U-bahn back to my East Side hotel was packed and noisy, with crowds of revellers openly swigging from bottles of Berliner beer or gin. I had forgotten how puritanical Britain has become; no open drinking on public transport. And although there’s a smoking ban in Berlin, most people ignore it.
I emerged at Warschauer Strasse station, where the midnight streets were throbbing and everyone was dressed as if in an alternative emerging punk quartet – clothes too tight, too dark and too torn, ignoring any attempt at being sensible.
My nhow hotel, just around the corner, catered for Berlin’s burgeoning music industry. I sat on the giant, shiny, pink, plastic sofas in the lounge; I was the only guest not sporting a tattoo. Everyone was busy working on their big break, staring at their Apple Mac Air, even over breakfast, as if the message could come through at any moment.
The city is still busy reconstructing itself from the ruins of war, investing in showcase museums and arts venues. Just like in the 1920s, in Berlin today, you get the feeling that anyone can be an emerging artist.
Bored with watching the back of laptop screens, I wandered back out to Warschauer Strasse. It took a while to cross the busy street to the Scheers Schnitzel stall. There is no jaywalking. Ampelmännchen (the pedestrian symbol on the traffic lights) is king. For all their alternative ways, Berliners won’t dare to defy him and cross the road when he’s red. I sat at the stall and ordered a schnitzel the size of a baby blanket, a pile of potato salad and a bottle of Berliner to wash it down with.
From this corner of Warschauer and Stralauer Allee, I could look across to East Side Gallery: over half a mile of the Berlin Wall bordering the River Spree, smothered in graffiti, including a 10ft-high portrait of Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker snogging, called My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love.
Against this giant set, a cast as international as Isherwood’s crowd performed street acts. None of them was old enough to have seen the Berlin Wall intact. Much has changed since Weimar and Cabaret, but the sense of dancing in the ruins still imbues the city’s streets.
A young Australian girl with a surfer’s long, blonde hair strummed a guitar and sang soulfully with a voice as clear as the water in the Coral Sea; an African man juggled six balls with one hand; and an English gent twirled an umbrella and impersonated Chaplin, while dancing with a feather boa-draped dummy. The crowd gathered and roared each time the juggler took up another ball.
It was the best theatre I’d seen all week, and by far the most decadent. I was thrilled that Berlin can still be home to performing misfits and outsiders. Perhaps I should have packed my fishnets.
Details of Brendan Nash’s tours at www.isherwoods-neighbourhood.com