[title]
Smoky cabaret clubs are made for transgression: through the fug of smoke and darkness, who can tell who's playing by the rules. Headlong and Bush Theatre's co-production of Melissa Bubnic's play with songs uses the gorgeously atmospheric surroundings of Bush Hall to smash apart taboos, in an all-female satire of the City at its macho worst.
Bubnic's subject, Astrid, is a female senior broker who’s decided that the only way she can survive in a world of boys being boys is to join them. Kirsty Bushell’s glorious performance makes it feel like Astrid's only ever a few drinks away from Tracey Emin's drunken TV appearance - she seduces her banking clients with a soulless mix of spike heels, lap-dancing nights out and blokey straight-talking.
Reluctantly, she takes on wannabe broker Priya as her protégée, scraping off her ‘nice girl’ veneer with a sandpaper of rasping monologues about the City at its very worst. Appropriately enough, Joanna Scotcher’s set design puts three lavatory cubicles centre stage – they host a world powered by shit pranks and toilet humour, where being racist and sexist is just normal office banter, and hiring a prostitute is standard corporate entertainment.
Amy Hodge’s slick, pacy production has the all-female, six-strong cast dancing, sparring and dragging it up in a brilliantly raucous satire of banking life. Emily Barber adopts a quiff and a simpering drawl to play Harrison Stevenson, a posh boy whose Daddy’s position can get him a job, but not the respect of his bullying colleagues. And Helen Schlesinger is wonderfully bluff and slippery as back-stabbing office manager Arthur Beale. The story's momentum is pretty predictable: as Astrid's initial briefing to Priya makes abundantly clear, "brokers, we’re flies on shit". Sharp-suited rivals fall like horses on a muddy year at Aintree - and everyone comes out stinking.
Sometimes the predictability of the story's gender politics feels uncomfortable: sex worker Isabelle’s storyline pushes things just a slither too far into satire. But otherwise, it feels like Bubnic is completely aware of the clichés she uses, spotlighting them before she mercilessly exploits them.
And besides, there's a radical, exhilaratingly feminist energy to the spectacle of watching dragged-up women of all ages playing sleazy bankers and brokers running riot. Like all the best cabaret shows, there's pain at its heart, too, and when Astrid drapes herself over the piano to pour out a song of heartbreak, she looks utterly, horrifyingly alone.