Is it possible, the reviewer asks himself, that this sharpest, most wicked and most entertaining of theatrical cabaret acts is mellowing with (if one dares use the word) age? Last night it seemed as if some of the irony and satire which have been the staple of this camp trio was less wickedly honed than before, and about one-quarter of their still vastly accomplished and very entertaining numbers were informed by triste or regret as much as by the imperative to puncture social or sexual attitudes.
They are still - Dilly Keane, Adele Anderson and Issy van Randwyck - wonderfully politically incorrect and musically adept in launching their arrows at the heart of the complacent middle-brow appreciation of how the world works. Surely they could not be getting romantic as well? Possibly not, given their rumbustious rendition of Taboo, in which they list off a catalogue of subjects about which they should not, but do, comment. And definitely not in their sharply sexist vision of the New Man or their singularly racist Lieder. And they remain staunchly raunchy in such numbers as Let's Go to a Hotel.
The satire remains accurate in It Girls ("thank the Lord we're thick and thin") and Charity (wherein are exposed the ladies who dance for good causes), and the irony is maintained in the Mexican romance of The Herpes Tango, the social pretence of Mistaken Identity and the mounting adulterous anger of Much More Married. But then there is the triste of Haunted, of Old Home (upon which the door must close), of Jealousy (a turned-on-its-head blues torch song) and Saturday Night (a definitive lament for loneliness).
The performance and the musicianship remain consummately professional and none should miss the encore, with its definitive curtain line. Maybe the real sadness, not to mention triste, is that tonight (8 p.m.) is the last night to catch them in Dublin.