Magnifique: three hours of almost non-stop music, dance, jokes and near-delirium can be had at Le Chat Noir, where Les Enfants Vagabondes bring their music to your table
STEVEN DOWNES takes a trip back in time and a sip of a once-banned liquor
Everyone these days appears to be on “a journey” of some kind or another.
If you were to take a half-hour journey from East Croydon, via Victoria and the District line, you could step through the doors of a disused Victorian laundry and into a Paris restaurant of la Belle Époque, where the champagne flows, there are Can-can girls (well, girl, actually), eccentric Erik Satie is tinkling a Gnossiene on the ivories, and you can sample intoxicating absinthe, before it got banned.
Le Chat Noir is an immersive theatre experience just opened in West Ken, where a small but energetic cast and band of musicians, plus dozens of hard-working staff, help to create a convincing sense of period, of 130 years ago, when electric lighting had only just been installed and the Eiffel Tower had only just been erected.
And yes, there were one or two erection jokes in this bawdy, rambunctious romp through a night in Bohemian Montmartre at the end of the 19th Century.
Far from morose: looking like a younger John McCririck, Joe Morose as Rodolphe Salis drives the show through its three hours
The tour de force of this three-hour-plus production comes from Joe Morose, as the very convivial host Rodolphe Salis, who presents a piece of theatre in three acts – Art, Absinthe and Anarchy. Salis created the original Le Chat Noir, a Parisian cabaret that launched a cultural revolution and gave birth to modern nightlife.
The company behind the production, The Lost Estate, has transformed an old industrial building into a quite marvellously evocative night club, suitably intimate – everyone’s table is elbow-to-elbow with your neighbour – with low ceilings, dressed in plush red velvet and with electric light Tiffany lamps throughout. It’s possibly one-third larger than Soho’s Ronnie Scott’s club, yet the performers are almost always within touching distance. Immersive, indeed.
Morose’s look has something of a younger John McCririck about him, but not in a bad way. Described as “a renaissance man for the snap-chat generation”, Morose’s quick-witted and acid-tongued rat-a-tat-tat delivery keeps the show’s pace up throughout most of the show.
Just the ticket: Le Chat Noir is an immersive experience
In 1890s Paris, Le Chat Noir would feature the leading artistes and entertainers of their day, and in 2026 west London’s imagining of that experience, Morose as Salis heads a cast that includes Buatier De Kolta (performed by accomplished magician Neil Kelso), dancer Cléo de Mérode (burlesque artist Coco Belle), mime Paul LeGrand (performed by Alexander Luttley), and chanteuse Yvette Guilbert (impressive singer Issy Wroe Wright), all accompanied by a terribly tight house band, Les Enfants Vagabondes. Plus Erik on the piano, obviously.
The music, let’s be clear, is magnificent.
The immersive theatre works. We all become part of the story and join the writers, illustrators, poets and musicians who made Montmartre a place of great ideas, art and fun. The experience evokes the secret suppers of Paris’s wayward aristocrats, where indulgence is an art form and pleasure a quiet rebellion.
The only thing missing might have been a guest appearance from Toulouse Lautrec. The artist who did so much to capture Paris of the era could well have been there, but we just missed seeing him amid the constant scurrying of the attentive waiters, as they served up a three-course meal, wine and cocktails, and the theatre of the absinthe, to go with the theatre of the absurd.
Just before the second act, the waiting staff parade around the auditorium, taking ornate two-tap water bottles to most tables, in a ceremony to deliver absinthe to a new audience. Nicknamed la fée verte or “the Green Fairy,” absinthe is a high-proof, aniseed-flavoured spirit that was the height of fashion in 19th Century Paris, attracting its own myths and legends about its powers to cause hallucinations.
Theatre of absinthe: the whole delivery of the drink adds to the atmosphere
The dribbling of water over a stylised spoon with a sugar cube dissolving before your eyes, into the gradually greening liquid in the glass, was, for me, probably more entertaining than the second act, which comprised some kind of dream dance sequence through green smog involving the mime artist and de Mérode.
The presentation of my cocktail, the Elixir des Artistes, with walnut wine in a kind of brandy glass, served over a gently heating candle, was another theatrical touch, and a delicious discovery.
The format of the show allowed for the serving of the meal, a set menu with vegetarian options as required. A paté, cheese and saucisson starter was waiting for us on arrival, and a side order of l’escargot arrived soon after, followed by coq au vin and ultimately tarte au citron. The food was probably the least French thing about the whole evening – the snails had never come within sniffing distance of any garlic, while the chicken was dry, with disappointingly little sauce.
This is important, because an evening out at Le Chat Noir is not inexpensive.
We were the guests of The Lost Estate (thank you very much), and for the full version of the experience, a pair of VIP tickets would normally cost £450. The cheapest option on offer, including the “Parisian banquet”, will cost you £129.85 per ticket. So not a cheap night out.
High energy: Coco Belle as the dancer puts grace and balletic poise to the production
However, compare that cost to a pre- or post-theatre meal at, say, Zedel’s or L’Escargot, and then the cost of your show tickets on top, and Le Chat Noir comes in at a comparable, if not less expensive, level. A pair of tickets, including wine and food, at the Playhouse Theatre for Cabaret (on which the overall staging of Le Chat Noir seems to owe much) can be as much as almost £600.
The London production of Cabaret, which opened more than six years ago with Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley (whatever became of her?), has been acclaimed and won multiple awards, but they don’t ask theatre-goers to arrive in costumes of the era. Given it is set in the Germany of the 1930s, it’s probably not worth the risk…
VIP treatment: Le Chat Noir is immersive time travel by velvet and smoke
No such qualms at Le Chat Noir, where punters are encouraged to embrace the inherent glamour of the era. Next to us, a transatlantic couple looked most dapper, he in a top hat, she wearing a period dress. “It’s amazing what you can find in your closet,” said she. When I looked in my closet, I could only find clothes from the 1980s, not the 1880s…
The final, frantic, third act was indeed energising and uplifting, with Coco Belle putting in more steps than a London Marathon runner, and the solo Can-can references leading to what can only be described as “the big reveal”. No spoilers, after all…
Le Chat Noir is time travel by velvet and smoke. It’s a night that blurs the line between elegance and delirium. The train ride home from Victoria was certainly, shall we say, mellow.
And Croydon, this is what we might have had!
Inside Croydon’s loyal readers might remember around four years ago, when Westfield and the council entered into preliminary talks about bringing another immersive theatre company, Secret Cinema, into the empty Allders building. Like so much that has been promised, by Westfield and Mayor Perry, of course, it all came to nothing.
So in the meantime, we’ll all just have to head for West Kensington. Booking details about the show and The Lost Estate’s other productions can be found by clicking here
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