Foreign Affairs

Night Hotel; Wed 2

Photograph: Liz Liguori

The term cabaret confuses people. In New York, it tends to refer to a well-behaved evening of Great American Songbook standards, which comes as a disappointment to those who expect something more like the movie Cabaret: an edgy retro-Berlin exercise in louche-lipped decadence, with a brassy orchestra, a polysexually perverse MC and oodles of naked flesh. And that’s exactly the stuff of the naughty but welcoming variety show Foreign Affairs, which concludes its run at the Night Hotel this week.

Promoted by the iconic 1990s club-scene figure Lee Chappell, Foreign Affairs is hosted by a pair of usual downtown suspects: the slick, sharp-cheeked German singer Daniel Isengart, who goes for a strange balance between sexual exhibitionism and Continental archness—he’s like a hustler striking Marlene Dietrich poses in an Amsterdam window—and the distinctive comic vocalist Lady Rizo, who lends a Victrola vibrato to modern fare with a wink of her elaborate lashes. Guest stars at Wednesday’s finale include the talented singer-songwriter Our Lady J and the tactfully named burlesque star Jo Boobs. The series may return next year at a different location, if we’re lucky, but why wait? Come to the cabaret, old chum. The sharks will eat you up.—Adam Feldman

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