Review: MEOW MEOW: IT'S COME TO THIS, Soho Theatre

Somewhere in a parallel dimension, there’s a version of Melissa Madden Gray that became an internationally renowned singer, as comfortable in French, Italian and German as English. In another one, she finds herself an in-demand circus clown able to bring the house down with her wickedly funny cocktail of sardonic facial expressions, physical antics and perfect timing. Then there’s the dimension where she’s a dominatrix who could humble a giant with her battery of passive aggressive taunts and expert manhandling..

In this one, though, she’s some kind of combination of all three and, under the moniker of Meow Meow, has risen to the top of the cabaret tree to become something akin to royalty. She doesn’t wear a crown, more a nest-like midnight-black wig, but still she reigns. Her famous fans and friends are not shy of making an appearance: in the last two nights, Ncuti Gatwa, Ruby Wax, Graham Norton and Flo and Joan have flocked to see her latest show It’s Come to This.

As she always reminds us in her opening speech, Meow Meow has been around and around and up and (now) down. Having performed at Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl, she despondently looks around and tries to remember exactly which joint she's in tonight. That she knows the venue’s name and we know she knows is all part of the fun, as is buying into this character who, here apparently at the nadir of her career, has to move her own baby grand piano across the stage and then struggle through this latest shambles of a show with the aid of her DIY props.

She’s no stranger to London theatre spaces, having previously terrorised audiences at the Royal Festival Hall, the Purcell Room and the Globe. During her controversial short stint as the latter venue’s artistic director, Emma Rice cast Meow Meow as the queen of the fairies in her fantastic Midsummer Night’s Dream.

It was a memorable turn made all the better by bringing her bullish personality and parts of her own act to the role of Titania, handing out roses to those standing at the edge of the stage and then demanding be thrown at her when she next re-entered.

She is well known for reprimanding any journalists who have the temerity to label her as a cabaret artiste (she prefers instead the term “post-postmodern”) even as she clings good and hard to all the traits of of various branches of that art form, from her explosive clowning to the emotionally charged interpretations of modern classics like Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees”. A common criticism levelled at her is that she doesn’t do enough singing but that is kind of missing the point: she is a one-woman variety show and asking her to focus on just one of her sublime skills is not what she has ever been about.

She may not be cabaret with a small “c” but there are definite echoes of Cabaret’s Sally Bowles in the way she charismatically and flamboyantly wraps all and sundry in her ongoing whirlwind; whether those in the front row should pay double or be allowed a refund is debatable.

There’s also, though, something of the real Sally Bowles, an American called Jean Ross who worked in Berlin as a nightclub singer before becoming a journalist and an anti-fascist activist. Meow Meow doesn’t name the current occupant of the White House but she doesn’t need to: her fears for the present state of the world and wherever it is going are rooted in his policies and his administration’s approach to those who he deems to be political enemies.

In a possible nod to retirement, a cloth hanging at the back of the stage emblazoned with the words “The End”. Could this be the last we see of her? That’s extremely doubtful considering how much she seems to love the spotlight and torturing those poor unfortunate souls who come to see her. There’s also no shortage of physical energy expended as she bounces around the stage and her operatic voice is after all these years as fine as it ever was.

If anything, it is her creative energy that seems to be ebbing. She will never not be one of the most entertaining performers in any town she finds herself in but much of It’s Come To This has been recycled from previous outings: again with the roses, again with the bags, again with the crowd surfing.

Even those bands who supplement their pensions by playing out their greatest hits around the world occasionally draw a line under their old songs and then pop into the studio for fresh material. Possessed of one of the sharpest minds in the business, there’s always hope that (as the cloth perhaps indicates), this show is the end of one chapter and the start of a new one.

Meow Meow: It’s Come To This continues at Soho Theatre until 24 May.