‘Ido think in 90 mins,” says the kamikaze cabaret performer Meow Meow, “we can really make a difference.” It’s a joke, clearly: in the face of encroaching tyranny and freedoms everywhere circumscribed, this blithering and eccentric diva seems unlikely to be much use. It’s all she can do to get her show started, wheeling a piano effortfully onstage, replaying the whoops and cheers of bygone gigs and glories on a feeble Walkman. And yet, by the end of It’s Come to This, Meow Meow – AKA Melissa Madden Gray – seems really to want to ask: what, in such ominous times, should the artist do?
You can see why the question might concern her, engaged as she is with the songs of the Weimar era (Brecht and Weill’s Ballad of the Soldier’s Wife gets an outing here). Elsewhere, our big-haired, boundaries-free host twinschansonwith clownish comedy in unique combination, now crooning Jacques Brel, now crawling cleavage-first over the shoulders of her crowd. As audience members are press-ganged on stage to fondle and manhandle its star, the show (with piano by Ben Dawson) can seem like an experiment to see how battily you can behave before the song you’re singing is eclipsed entirely.
The answer is: quite a lot, if your voice is as ravishing an instrument as Meow Meow. Occasionally, the shtick subsides and we get to really savour it. Equally often, that voice seeks attention for itself at the expense of the song. Latterly, the show devolves into worrisome political inquiry, as our host frets about the rise of nazism and Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on the angel of history. Knowing what we know of the 1930s, what should we do now similar storm clouds are gathering? Her words “I don’t know” resounding like a siren, Meow Meow raises the alarm, but offers few answers.
At Soho Theatre, London, until 24 May.