The spelling of Mikelangelo, the question of whether men from the Black Sea could be ‘gentlemen’ and the fact that dead men are supposed not to be able to tell tales should be a dead cert for clues that this will be no ordinary performance. 

If you hadn’t picked it from this then you will surely be alerted by the appearance of Mikelangelo himself, the sartorial ‘nightingale of the Adriatic’ who insists on repeating his entrance because “the lighting girl has not got the spot light right.”

This masterful, Elvis look-alike and slick crooner weaves a tight web of intrigue, irony, satire and daredevilry around his audience like a shiny black spider coaxing the innocent fly into his fatal trap. This is anything but an ordinary performance, in a finely crafted, darkly funny, dead-pan production.

The lucky audience is treated to a festival of song, dancing with instruments, macabre stories which appear not to end, harmonies that make your hair curl, individual stunning performances by the ‘gentlemen’, breath-takingly audacious lyrics – “sodomy is not just for animals” – all energised by the deliciously quiffed Mikelangelo who thinks nothing of taking out his comb to give that said quiff extra height and smoothness.  

These are seriously superb musicians and the audience is spell-bound. No sooner have we figured out the words of ‘Skeletons Waiting for Salvation’ than we are thrown into world of the battlefield with pipes and drums.  Harmonica, violin, clarinet, double bass, guitars and myriad percussive instruments – among them, castanets and rattles – are handled with consummate ease and skill.

The Great Moldavio, “snake-charmer of the clarinet”, Guido Libido, “master of a thousand faces”, Rufino, “Catalan Casanova” and Little Ivan, “ruthless ballroom dancer” are a suspect bunch of musos from the Balkans and with the very seedy Mikeangelo at their helm they whirl their way through a charade of charismatic musical antics.

Highlights for me are the wildly intense Rufino – “I’m glad you like me” – telling his tale of the glass eye and the “struggle to be human”, the swinging ‘Know Your Enemy’ of the double bass, the spoof ‘10 Long Years in the Saddle’, and the deliciously nasty ‘On Invisible Wings’.

The whole lot is the creation of Mikelangelo. Mikelangelo is his name, and that’s it. No surname. No Smith, Brown, or Bloggs. “It’s like Sting,” he says. And like Sting he has created an extraordinary world.

At the end, in a rare moment of non irony he gives a soulful rendition of ‘Blue Smoke’ but even then his audience suspects more than a little foul play.

This is cabaret at its very best; it’s darkly quirky, ironic best. 

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