Painting the town

No one in the Vienna Konzerthaus on the night of Tuesday 14 November 1922 was prepared for what they were about to witness.

- Meghan Kobza

Up All Night: A History of Going Out By Imogen Willetts W&N, 384 pages, £25

In fact, it seems that no one had much of an idea of what they’d seen even after they’d seen it. The performances of Berlin cabaret stars Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste left the audience speechless — quite literally.

That show, Dances of Vice, Horror, and Ecstasy, was a much more raw, nightmarish production than anticipated. Stories of sex, addiction and violence were portrayed through a potent combination of music, dance, costume and drug use, shocking the refined Austrian audience into a silent stupor. The fantasy of Berlin’s subversive nightlife was perhaps more palatable than its reality — not unlike our own reception of