Clever cabaret lacks content

What do you believe? That the US president is a lizard? That the saving of Private Jessica Lynch was staged for the cameras? That Tom Cruise is gay? That it's possible that we are simply lunch for some species from out of space?

In this media saturated age of state-engineered spin, ignorance and pathological fear, young American theatre company The Civilians have made a right song and dance out of this fabulously rich subject area.

Having conducted extensive vox pops with their fellow Americans on what they think they know to be true, they've turned the results not into yet another piece of verbatim theatre but a smart, sassy piece of cabaret.

The genius of this piece is the form, rather than the content. Performed by five actor/singers, it's a piece that uses popular song to both revel in and point out the absurdity of certain manifestations of prejudice. We are warned from the start that there is no plot - it's a cabaret, after all.

Instead the cast weave together wildly discordant material gathered from interviewees that range from every Jessica Lynch in the phone book to a cab driver into an amusing revue that effectively harnesses the glossy, superficial surface of the genre to emphasise the random nature of belief, and its seemingly incoherent relationship with truth.

(I Am) Nobody's Lunch
Soho Theatre
Dean Street, W1D 3NE