London life's a Kabarett

The German spelling (Kabarett) and the late-night (10pm) weekend slot make a lot of hostages to fortune. What, observers wondered, is Henry Goodman playing at? Is it all just a ploy by the National to placate Goodman - a genial de Niro lookalike - and keep him playing Shylock for a little longer, earlier in the week? The atmosphere was carefully constructed, with Chris Riddell of The Observer drawing a cartoon of Gordon Brown as we walked in. It might have been easy to go for a little late-night banter and a few old songs, but as the clock approached midnight, it became clear that director Goodman, the band and his five-strong cast were attempting something more hard-hitting than an agreeable late night out.

The over-ambitious brief was to portray the whole of London, good and bad. This led to mishits like the too-shrill Home Counties woman's anti-PC rant and the too-long pre-closer which sounded like an entry for a Neil Jordan film. But there were triumphs too, like jabs at dotcom millionaires. The double-hander, written by Oliver Cotton, in which Peter Polycarpou and Dawn Hope played two NHS patients, waiting for theatre treatment, was a thrillingly satirical attack on health-care cuts.

Name-checks for the Groucho, Oxo Tower and Atlantic Club made for an intimate atmosphere, but when the curtain was ripped open to reveal Centrepoint and Waterloo Bridge, Goodman's pound of flash seemed truly to have recreated the glamour and sleaze of London.

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Metropolis Kabarett