Cabaret

Who Bourgeois & Maurice

What Colourful, acidic neo-cabaret duo who get under your skin. Feature continues

Why It’s a sold-out Saturday night for Bourgeois & Maurice, the caustic cabaret duo up for the whole month; the audience as full of middle-aged folk as younger whipper-snappers in vintage-by-way-of-Topshop fashions. This is their ‘Social Work’ show which ran at London’s Soho Theatre in March, an original ode to 21st century debauchery – stalking, celebrity, drugs and the tedious lives of dull people – dressed up and put on display. Reduced to an hour – as nearly all cabaret and comedy shows are here – it’s all the stronger for it: tightly-wound, oozing with assured confidence, Georgeois Bourgeois owns the stage, while Maurice Maurice is a much clearer, more twisted character. Shallow and superficial Bourgeois & Maurice surely are, but there’s more to them than fabulous false eyelashes, as witnessed in torchsongs ‘Addicted’ and ‘Forget You’, numbers which get under your skin and come back to haunt you later. It’s a shame that ‘All The Boys’ doesn’t translate here, however: few in the audience seem to get the many references to London’s gay clubs. Funnily enough, what is middle of the road in, say, east London is considered wildly edgy here: ‘Just Die’, with its ‘if you don’t know what to do with your life, just die’ lyrics, doesn’t wash with the whole audience. Happily, Bourgeois & Maurice don't much care. Love them or loathe them, they're never going to respect you in the morning. Simone Baird

Until Aug 31, The Pleasance Over The Road 2, 9.45pm