Prior to leaving the States, we had booked exactly 4 activities. Now, we could have thrown in the towel after the whole temple escapade but the booze and a nap did wonders so we set off for our next adventure and wow, what an experience!
Calypso Cabaret has been performing in Bangkok for 30+ years. It’s tradition! It also has 4.2 stars on Google Maps where it’s described as a “Glitzy, Las Vegas–style transgender cabaret, burlesque & dinner show at Asiatique riverfront market.” Sounds fabulous right?! I’m in! When I booked our tickets, I had the option of adding on a Thai dinner with a Thai performance. Obviously, I did this because the more I get to experience while I travel, the better.
Rush hour traffic was a bit much and so we arrived about 20 minutes after dinner started. Fortunately for us, this wasn’t an issue. They were still able to seat us and we were promptly served a delicious meal in fancy dishes. I will say that dessert was not exactly a winner for either of us. I hadn’t looked at the menu ahead of time but apparently, the brightly colored items pictured below are kanom look choup or fruit shaped mung beans. They have a very interesting texture that didn’t do much for me.
The Thai performance was lovely. There was an announcer that explained the scenes they were depicting and all of the performers did well. It was interesting that people didn’t really treat it like a performance. I mean, they clapped at the end of each performance but they spent most of talking, eating, and/or playing on their phones. It wasn’t quite the experience I expected. At the end of the show, most people swarmed up to the stage to take photos with the performers they’d largely ignored. I still don’t get it.
After our dinner show, we relocated to the main theatre for the cabaret show. This was much more the theater I’d expected rather than the mall vibe our dinner show exuded. It really gave off a glitzy retro vibe and the piped-in music really got me excited to see the performance.
My dear reader, I lack words to adequately summarize this show. It wasn’t bad nor was it good. It wasn’t risque or moving or shocking or thrilling or any number of other words one might use to describe a cabaret show. Perhaps disjointed best describes it but I’m going to stick with my gut and go with “an experience”.
The show we saw was an incredibly unusual mix of music/performance. The performers are lip singing (which I’m totally fine with and expected!) but there seemed to be zero rhyme or reason for their song selections. To set the scene the very first performance was set to operatic music. The performers were all moving slowly in stiff, fancy, mermaid gowns. Immediately after this number? We had the entire crew singing, dancing, and stripping to Candy Man by Christina Aguilera.
The show lasted slightly over an hour and, per the website, there were 16 performances. I didn’t keep track but I can tell you that we watched several performances lip sync’d to Chinese lyrics, 1 to Japanese, 1 to Hindi (?), and all sorts of eras of US music including a three-song tribute to Rhianna. This last had costumes for each song and a large banner showing you Rhianna in said costume so you could follow along.
I am a typical American and only speak English. I’m not sure if there was a common theme in the non-English songs but I can tell you I couldn’t find one in the English songs. In drag shows (the closest thing I can think of to this experience), we’d have a host helping us navigate between numbers. They’d set the stage, tell some jokes, introduce the numbers, and overall smooth the transitions between sets.
I’ve not been to any other performances in Bangkok so I’m not sure if what we observed was typical. I also have absolutely no idea how much the language barrier (on both the side of the hosts as well as the audience) played. However, after nearly every performance, one of our 2 hosts would say “Ladies and Gettleman”. Then a group of similarly dressed men or women would come to the front of the stage and bow; at which point the host would say “Calypso boys/girls”. The boys/girls bit varied depending on who was bowing. That’s it. Every single time they were on the stage.
It sounds like I’m bashing the show and I promise that isn’t my intent! The performers were good! I sure as heck can’t lip-sing in multiple languages while performing plus execute so very many costume changes (many of which occurred on stage). I have to say performing because it wasn’t all dancing. Most of the dancing was high energy but several of the performances told a story. They were basically mini-plays sandwiched among more typical dance numbers.
For example, in the performance pictured below, there were originally 3 men on stage who attacked and killed one of the women who was dressed like those pictured. Her sisters arrived on the scene and attacked the men. Two of the men disappear off stage and the one that’s left sings a love song to the women who now stand still as statues around him.
One of the other performances started out all Matrix-like. Men in black outfits. Lasers. There was a wedding and I have to assume the groom was a mobster and the men in black were his goons? Post-wedding the groom cheats on his bride with at least 3 women who are dressed in dark, skin-tight outfits (the total opposite of the bridal gown). Bride does a costume change and kinda looks like a mistress but she now has a gun? I couldn’t tell if she was trying to fool around as payback or trying to win him over by dressing like the women he clearly wanted. Anyway, he forced her back into the bride outfit, shot her with her own gun, and then posed with all his other women and goons. This was one of the non-English numbers so perhaps I visually lost something in translation…
Like I said, it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t great but it was definitely a roller coaster of an experience!
This is so perfectly described. An experience is right. 🙂 Where people love people and kill people randomly and there are lasers and leather and opera and Christina and Rhianna and fabulous costumes! You had me giggling all the way through – fabulous dahling.