Bourgeois & Maurice: Shedding Skin at the Soho Theatre, W1

Twenty minutes in, the male half of the act is off stage changing out of a batwing glitter jumpsuit into a black unitard with poodle flounces. His partner prowls the benches deploying a mind-reading gag, in which she holds her hand over an audience member and a disembodied voice reads his “thoughts”. In front of me a man was made to think: “I don’t know what’s happening. Am I meant to be laughing? Is it theatre or cabaret? Where are the nipple tassels?”

A good question, all the more unsettling as the set is left over from Dandy in the Underworld: the skull-lined flat of Sebastian Horsley, who died shortly after his portrayal on this very stage. This show too is self-consciously louche.

Bourgeois and Maurice are part of the trend for burlesquey, self-aware new cabaret, nostalgic for naughtier days. They are heirs of the self-styled “queer” dress-up movement of the Nineties, of the Duckie Collective, La Clique and a generation of performers who — honourably enough — got bored of grungy stand-up and plastic pop, and opted for glitter and shock. Some are terrific — this stage lately hosted the remarkable Meow Meow — others not. Decadence is hard work when nobody bothers to disapprove: it is not enough to be a Weimar wannabe in pounds of eyeshadow, mixing political and sexual soundbites with torch- songs. Unless you are so drop-dead hilarious that nothing else matters, you need a narrative: light and shade, wit, heart. You’ve got to draw the audience, half-horrified, into your world.