Since forsaking car-crash-messiah status as the Divine David, David Hoyle has established himself as cabaret's most formidable performer in his own right, fusing savage satire and brilliant showmanship. 'Unplugged', his first song-based show, is a bold departure that yields strong results.
Hoyle cuts a pared-down, refined figure here, his classic-cabaret maquillage, slicked-back hair and dazzling red-and-black menswear suggesting Joel Grey-meets-a-matador on Blackpool pier.
On Saturday's first night - more of a preview, really - Hoyle's characteristic strengths remained intact. Intensely charismatic, he dispenses coruscating insights with deceptive lightness and wit, barely allowing depth charges targeting, say, education or mental health to detonate before moving on with a well-placed 'I'll leave that with you'. The assurance of his patter and audience rapport, well-framed by Nathan Evans's confident production, is worth the ticket price alone.
Hoyle's singing is less technically consummate but when he owns a number, his delivery is sonorous, expressive and compelling. Saturday's stand-outs were signature tune 'You Made Me Love You', in a jaunty arrangement by terrific accompanist Michael Roulston; frenzied new composition 'A Return to Trauma'; and a tremendously impassioned version of Nine Inch Nails' 'Hurt'.
Elsewhere in a set that also included songs from Liza Minnelli, New Order and Tony Christie, the results were variable, Hoyle at times straining to do justice to his selections. When he owns them like he owns his sensibility and his audience, 'Unplugged', already great, should be sensational.