The opulent setting of the Hotel Café Royal is home to the Black Cat Cabaret’s Salon des Artistes. When you first enter, the historic, almost intimidatingly grandiose surrounds of the Oscar Wilde Bar immediately transport you to another time, preparing you for the show to come.

And this well put-together show features some very talented performers. Tom Carradine is an impeccable pianist, while the host, Lili La Scala, strikes the perfect balance between elegance and risqué provocation. In between acts she performs a range of songs, including some American standards such as ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’ impressively well, with pitch-perfect, operatic, sweeping vocals.

There are four performers in total introduced by Lili La Scala, with a brief interval following the first two. In the first act are juggler Florian Brooks and Sarah-Louise Young, who plays a knife-wielding, tortured French artiste, La Poule Plombée. Florian Brooks’s act is diverting enough, as he expertly juggles bar-related objects: a couple of lemons, a champagne bottle, two glasses and a tray. As his finale, he juggles a whole ice bucket very skilfully.

Yet it was La Poule Plombée who stole the show. Her endearing patter and sharp wit, combined with the vulnerability of her ‘French artiste’ persona, works really well in entertaining the audience. Telling the story of how Edith Piaf supposedly stole her thunder, she drolly continues that she left to go to London as: “I could not stay in France, so I had to go somewhere else where culture was yet to be created.” She also comically notes that while Piaf was referred to as the little sparrow, her own epithet of La Poule Plombée means something along the lines of ‘frumpy pigeon’ in English. In between her spiel, she performs three very funny, witty songs: ‘Je Suis Artiste’, ‘It’s A Picnic’ and ‘One Night Stand,’ which all also showcase her excellent vocal range.

In Act Two, Lili La Scala introduces Dusty Limits to the stage, a cabaret legend who, as she entertainingly puts it, “is to cabaret what Maggie Smith is to Downton.” He sings a few songs in a rich, smooth voice, one of which is a cover of Lorde’s ‘Royals’, and this is pulled off surprisingly well. He delights in making a certain audience member uncomfortable by sitting in his lap and also making him dance with him, to great comedic impact.

The final performance is by Vicky Butterfly, a burlesque artist who is wrapped up in a heavy robe, and keeps spinning and twirling like a butterfly, eventually shedding the robe to reveal a lighter, more diaphanous, shining one underneath. It is more artistic and unusual than your conventional burlesque routine.

A continually high level of talent from all the performers elevates Black Cat’s Salon des Artistes from standard and often tired cabaret fare. Although a case could be made for the show being too polished and lacking in truly bizarre or spectacular acts, it still makes for a very enjoyable night out.

Black Cat Cabaret: Salon des Artistes is playing at Hotel Café Royal until 1 August. For more information and tickets, visit the Black Cat Cabaret website. Photo by Jason Moon.