To describe Suitcase Cabaret is difficult – best to go and see it, or, rather, experience it, for yourself. Slickly directed by Anna Maguire and Sam Pallis, the show will tour round various venues in Cambridge. I have to say that Jesus Chapel was not the most ideal place for it to start. For those further than three rows back the action was all but completely obstructed. The acoustic, while appropriately haunting, often meant that words were hard to discern.

Loosely based on the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters (a collection of unusual poems detailing lives in small-town America), the show advertises itself as “fusing the pertinent tales of Masters” with “the raw energy of a cabaret.” To put it crudely: shame about the cabaret part. Well, not quite. The dead residents of Spoon River are presented in a white-faced, macabre burlesque that is eminently watchable and manages to convey seedy horror and misery beneath a glamorous allure. However this device comes all too quickly to seem something of an imposition. It is an excuse for video projection, ballet, shadow puppets, and a seemingly endless ream of navy-blue silk.

The band, admittedly, were phenomenal. Effortlessly sending fragments of Satie, Wagner, Strauss (and something altogether more gaudy and sinister) out into the chapel. Yet they did seem over-used. Too often a word such as ‘rotund’ had to be accompanied with a farcical swoop on the trombone, or a soliloquy underscored with music.

There was serious sexing-up of which Alistair Campbell would have been proud: though I’m not convinced that this was needed. It was with the simplicity of the skilfully interwoven monologues that the production was at its brilliant best. When the cabaret died away to reveal a jittering, hysterical lost soul (an abused alcoholic, a French ballet dancer) something mesmeric and moving was created.

One can place too much emphasis on quibbles. Suitcase Cabaret is an evening that should (wherever its venue) not be (dis)missed. The small cast are extraordinary in their consistency, their mastering of accents, dance, and the beautiful, fragmented pouring-out of their temporal lives. Musicians, actors, designers and directors have come together to create an evening that is distinctive, original and imaginative. Yet their striving for these last three adjectives has meant that a faith in simplicity and in the moving, eloquent words of their source-material has been lost. By Oliver Soden

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