Cabaret

At  9.50pm on a Sunday night, I join the queue snaking from the archway of the Assembly Hall, round the corner up the Mound almost to the High Street.  Camille, the Celtic Queen of Cabaret is back in town following sell out seasons in London, New York and Sydney. From her Edinburgh debut in Le Cirque in 2003, and her award winning Spiegeltent show in 2007, it's been a long journey for this French-Irish architect from Cork who literally ran away with the Circus to be a global musical star.

The last time I saw an audience as glamorous as the one at High Tease, was at a Bryan Ferry concert. Say no more! This was my first taste of a burlesque show so the clues were there already for a fantastic, glittering, liberating, cheekily funny night.

They come along rarely, like diamonds in coal dust, glittering in all that darkness that is the Edinburgh Fringe: a perfectly formed comedic character with all the edges polished and rounded, the intonations and inflexions practised until they are flawless and have the impact and presence of a high yield, nuclear detonation.

Energy. Enthusiasm. Skimpy costumes. A casino. All in a fabulous historical venue, the Jam House. What more could you want from a late night cabaret show?

If you like cabaret burlesque this is a must because Voodoo Vaudeville know how to hold a very naughty party!

Penelope and Madeleine Solomon sing and sketch their way through an hour's worth of entertainment accompanied by a fine three-piece ensemble of button accordion, snare drum and double bass. This trio can certainly klezmer (klezmer being Jewish secular music, deriving from kleys (a vessel) and mer (song), i.e., song for drinking occasions).

Willcommen, Bienvenue, Welcome to the Cabaret, 21st century style - sexy, sophisticated, classy and deliciously camp. The genre of cabaret, created as avant garde, risqué adult entertainment in Paris in the 1890s, has always been about pushing the boundaries of taste and decency from naughty but nice to the daringly decadent.