[31] During the 2008 Thai political crisis, protesters took over the Suvarnabhumi Airport for eight days, which severely impacted the tourism industry.

Aiming to get audience members to buy drinks, the company gave complimentary tickets in the thousands to people staying in the hotels who were stuck because they could not fly.

[39] Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand, there were border shutdowns and international flight discontinuations, which caused ticket sales for Calypso Cabaret to drop.

[45] Other songs feature Romani men with guitars, a geisha wielding large fans, and an ostrich plume-adorned Carmen Miranda.

[46] An entertainer mimics Marilyn Monroe while wearing high-heeled shoes, a blonde wig, and a dress with silver sequin decorations.

The scholar Reya Farber said the Monroe performance was "embodying glamorous consumption and an iteration of classic American femininity".

[46] The Nation theater critic Pawit Mahasarinand praised the performers, writing "all the cast member[s] know how to act, showing the meanings of the lyrics of the songs they lip-synch through their facial expressions and physical movements".

[47][48] Marjorie Pravden of the Orlando Sentinel lauded the show for having "vaudevillelike acts with ribald humor, high-kicking chorus lines".

Farber found that Calypso Cabaret contributed to the positive perception through its promotional materials that say the performance is "is suitable to open-minded audiences of all ages and nationalities" and that the entertainers "highly valued class, style and taste" and "rigorously trained and educated".

[9] The Rutgers University scholar Jillana Beth Enteen considered Calypso Cabaret to be a family-friendly show owing to its talented entertainers and expertly designed outfits.

According to Vui, the marketing inaccurately portrays them to foreign viewers as "just a group of men who dress in women’s clothes and prance about the place".

[55] The Nation's Pawit Mahasarinand in 2015 called Calypso Cabaret a show for non-Thai tourists that was inapplicable to Thai viewers.

[58] The Thai fashion model Mimi Tao performed at Calypso Cabaret for several months and resigned after determining she was not interested in the role.

[59] Angele Anang, the winner of Drag Race Thailand's season 2, got her start in the entertainment industry as a Calypso Cabaret dancer.

[60] The Nation theater critic Pawit Mahasarinand praised the show, writing, "Most scenes have fun twists here and there that are either cheekily surprising or hilariously grotesque.

[44] In a positive review, a Taiwanese guide book about Bangkok said, "The dancers used their beautiful bodies to transcend gender and played each role vividly, which made people cheer loudly.

"[61] Calling the show "terrific entertainment", the Orlando Sentinel's Marjorie Pravden said Calypso Cabaret was "alternately funny, sensitive and outrageous" and "challenges one's own perspective on gender identification".

Chance said that although the show had "the most spectacularly bad dancing" she had ever viewed, she found that "the sheer scale of the event was commendable" and enjoyed "the spirit of fun and celebration of the whole evening".

She praised the numerous costume switches in the big cast and the stage crew's "excellent lighting" and good music timing.

[10][62] The author Charles Agar found the show to be "more creative than the standard drag parades at cabarets in Phuket or Pattaya".

Libertine friend, be careful, the show is eminently soft and good-natured and the candor competes with naivety as they say in three-baht novels.