Let Us Fly

Straight after one song-strewn, biographical tribute at the King's Head comes another, yet this is a very different bowl of borscht, taking us from the sublime (Broadway lyricist Dorothy Fields) to the sublimated - Vladimir Vysotsky, a performer adored by millions in the Soviet Union but whose songs and poems were banned during his lifetime.

In the stultifying Brezhnev years, Vysotsky was a thorn in the side of the authorities, many of whom loved his work on the quiet. Ostensibly about the human condition, it contained a distinct political message for those who cared to listen.

Mina and Moni Yakim's powerfully, if occasionally relentlessly sung, show, based on Vysotsky's life and songs, and the memoirs of his French actress wife, is all dramatic emotion in the Russian vein, its numbers of defiance often rendered like something out of Les MisÈrables (that too, of course, is tale of a struggle against oppression).

Vysotsky had a reputation for dourness. His sense of internal conflict is conveyed by three people - Dave Willetts, Joseph McCann and Miles Guerrini - playing the man, yet the repertoire here often belies that, with the occasional romanticism of Pushkin and plenty of biting satirical humour: one song about reincarnation drolly suggests that the ultimate in bad karma is to come back as a Russian.

Let Us Fly poignantly suggests Vysotsky's tragedy, that his creativity could not take flight without the impetus of censorship, but returning home after years of "freedom" in France also drove him to an early drinkfuelled death. And he never saw the fall of communism.

It might be difficult to appreciate now the daring of his work under the Soviet regime, but its universality is a reminder of how one man reached out to the enforced silent majority and gently rocked the political boat.

? Showin at the King's Head, N1, until 13 October. Box offfice: 020 7226 1916