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Margit Meyer-Rodenbeck
BAMBI KELLERMAN IN KABARET, with Pieter-Dirk Uys as Bambi and Godfrey Johnson at the piano, will offer theatre lovers a great night of comedy-cabaret at Die Boer on 6 December 2023.
Bambi Kellermann is the younger sister of Mrs Evita Bezuidenhout, still the 'most famous white woman in South Africa'. Chalk and cheese. Whereas Evita has become a household name and favourite across political-party lines, Bambi smoulders in the background – not yet as famous as her sister, but far more dangerous.
Bambi is back in the new democratic South Africa, having left Bethlehem of the old Volkstaat’s Orange Free State in 1956. Those interim years included her marriage to Nazi survivor Joachim von Kellermann and lurching from barely legal job to job. And then Paraguay, where von Kellermann hooked up with his old SS friends and eventually died. She now runs a wine-tasting cellar in Paarl, sometimes referred to as nothing more than an excuse for a high-class brothel. It is known that she is HIV-positive. But with money and knowledge, she can live with her virus, as she did with her terrible secrets.
Bambi has been inspired to sing by those famous Diva’s who also could not sing: Marlene Dietrich, Hildgarde Knef and Zarah Leander to name but the German ones. She loves the music of Kurt Weill and Stephen Sondheim. And being an Afrikaner meisie at heart, finds any excuse to sing her favourite boere liedjies out of the FAK Sangbundel. But with a sinister twist.
This is what her Kabaret is about: her extraordinary story of survival told in song. Her background echoed in familiar tunes, her inspirations gently mocked through canny impersonation. The cabaret, with music arranged and played by Godfrey Johnson, is in three languages. Her story told in English; her songs in German and Afrikaans.
This cabaret is not for the faint-hearted. It unites the acrid stench of the 1930s Weimar Republic and the sexy rot of Hamburg's Reperbahn with the familiar aromas associated with 'ons eie' Voortrekker-camps and rugby braaivleis-orgies.
BAMBI KELLERMANN IN KABARET, with Pieter-Dirk Uys as 'Bambi Kellermann' and Godfrey Johnson on piano, will be onstage at Die Boer theatre restaurant on 6 Dec at 20:30. Tickets are R200 and available at 021 979 1911 or on line at www.dieboer.com