Interview: Hersh Dagmarr on Minogueus Sanctus, his all-Kylie cabaret

Cabaret artist Hersh Dagmarr on fandom as faith, Weimar Berlin and bringing his all-Kylie show to Crazy Coqs for London Pride Weekend

Hersh Dagmarr describes himself as a spectre in denial. The character he inhabits across his shows is a queer kabarett performer from Weimar Berlin whose disappearance remains, conveniently, unexplained, and who is perpetually on the brink of a comeback. It is a conceit that suits him perfectly: theatrical, self-aware, and rooted in a tradition that was genuinely dangerous.

His latest show, Minogueus Sanctus, brings that Weimar sensibility into collision with the catalogue of Kylie Minogue, running at the Crazy Coqs on 3 July to close out Pride Month. The title alone signals his intentions: this is not a tribute act. Devotion, he suggests, is liturgy, and “Padam Padam” is gospel. Whether that framing is satire or homage is, as he explains below, the wrong question entirely.

Red Bus: Minogeus Sanctus frames devotion as liturgy, and Kylie’s “Padam Padam” as gospel. Is the show satirising that kind of fandom, honouring it, or holding both at once?

Hersh Dagmarr: What I can say is that it’s less about taking a side – satire or homage – and more an observation: looking closely at that idol/fan, fan/idol relationship and the extreme power of nostalgia in pop music, asking questions about it, and actually putting myself inside that dynamic rather than commenting on it from the outside.

Red Bus: You’ve folded Kylie numbers into other shows before, but never built a whole evening around her specifically. What made now the moment to give her one of her own?

Hersh Dagmarr: Well, first of all, I love and adore Kylie. Like most people, I suspect! She has a particular kind of grace and elegance I’ve always found irresistible. I believe her light and her grace are a shelter, bringing a much-needed good and relief into a world constantly bombarded with conflict, worry, and darkness. If there’s a Kylie song nearby, everything will be ok somehow.

But also the catalogue itself is extraordinary – song after song, always with this great sense of melody, and often melancholy if you scratch the glitters. Excellent material for cabaret reinterpretation.

It actually started with one song. I did a version of “I Should Be So Lucky” – but the complete opposite of the original: dark, dramatic and ominous. I wanted it to sound like a villain from a piece of Weimar Expressionist cinema. I wrote that arrangement for one of my themed shows, and it stayed with me. Then after the success of my all Pet Shop Boys cabaret “Indefinite Leave to Remain”, I thought – why not give Kylie the same treatment?

What began as a love letter slowly grew. The ideas, the layers, the themes… they invited themselves into the process, little by little, until the show became what it is now.

Red Bus: Weimar Berlin cabaret of the 1920s carried real danger and political weight when it was performed. Kylie’s songs were mostly written to make people happy on a dancefloor. How do you hold those two registers together without one undercutting the other?

Hersh Dagmarr: That’s precisely the creative challenge I love – bringing together two worlds, two styles that you wouldn’t necessarily put in the same room. That anachronistic tension of colliding eras that shouldn’t fit and somehow do is exactly where I like to work.

Also I see something quite rebellious, even daring, in Kylie’s equanimity – her lightness, her grace always remains untouched – especially now, in a world where harshness seems to have become the default setting. She seems to float above all rage and tumult. To stay that luminous when everything around you rewards the opposite, I see it as some sort of defiance in itself.

The Weimar kabarett context comes through, too – through my own story, through my character, who’s the same one in all my shows. I’m a spectre in denial – I was once one of the queer kabarett performers from the Weimar Berlin scene, whose disappearance has remained mysterious. And whatever alternative reality I currently find myself in, I’m determined to prepare my big comeback! I was a star myself on that Berlin scene, with admirers of my own, long before ‘fandom’ was even a word anyone used. I talk about it in the show and draw the parallel to my own fandom for Kylie.

So the Weimar reference isn’t a costume I’m putting on for the evening – it’s where I actually come from. It’s already in the DNA of the piece before Kylie even enters it.”

Red Bus: Karen Newby, your regular pianist, is credited as arranger on this show as well. How did the two of you work together to arrange the show?

Hersh Dagmarr: Karen is a brilliantly skilled arranger, and we’ve worked together for long enough now that we have this wonderful creative shorthand. She sometimes understands what I have in mind before I’ve even managed to express it properly. That said, most of the arrangements and ideas on this particular show came from me. But Karen certainly brought her own sparkle and expertise to them – refining things, sharpening things, finding the details I might have missed. It’s very much a collaboration, even if the initial spark usually starts on my end.

I think this show is maybe our richest musically so far – there’s a lot of twists and turns and surprises in it, more than in anything we’ve done together before.

Red Bus: The show opens London Pride weekend and closes out Pride Month. Does performing on that particular date change anything about how you build the evening, or does the show stay the show regardless of when it lands?

Hersh Dagmarr: The show itself doesn’t change but the resonance definitely does.

Kylie has been a symbol, a forever ally, for the LGBTQ+ community, and performing this piece on Pride weekend just amplifies what’s already there in the material.

I’m thrilled to bring my contribution to Pride in whatever shape or form I can – I think it’s extremely important to show up.

Our elders fought for the freedoms we have now, and showing up for Pride feels like a way of honouring that, of paying respect to the ones who fought for our rights and also, frankly, because none of it is permanently guaranteed. Weimar Berlin is probably the best example of that. That world had this extraordinary, flourishing queer culture, and it was wiped out almost overnight. So nothing is ever truly safe. You have to keep showing up for it.

Photo credit: Chris Clarke

Minogueus Sanctus plays at Crazy Coqs, 21 Sherwood St, London W1F 7ED on Friday 3 July 2026 at 7pm. Running time: 75 minutes. Tickets: £22.50.

Book at brasseriezedel.com/events/minogueus-sanctus-hersh-dagmarr-sings-kylie-minogue

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