Seven Deadly Sins - TNT

Love 'em or loathe 'em, the once seen, never to be forgotten Tiger Lillies are quite unlike anything else around. Their macabre contribution to the award-winning "Shockheaded Peter" brought them to the attention of a wider, theatre-going audience but it's done nothing to temper the deranged seediness of their decadent and sleazy lyrics. For their latest work, they've joined forces with performer Nathan Evans and burlesque artist Ophelia Bitz to illustrate the troubled path from paradise to hell by way of the seven deadly sins. The result is a disconcerting mixture of obscenePunch & Jude puppet show (in which she is now a he), fire-eating and otherworldly songs which sometimes meander but exert a gruesome fascination all the same. To illustrate Gluttony, the voluptuous Bitz scoffs a banana whilst percussionist Adrian Huge reaches down into the toilet he's sitting on, extricates the shitty contents and (to a chorus of amplified fart noises) chucks turds into the stalls. There are songs about sex and drugs and a big black dildo accompanied by Adrian Stout creating eerie sounds on bass and musical saw. A rubber baby doll doubles as a drumstick. Not one for the faint-hearted, then, or the prim and proper. But lead vocalist Martyn Jacques (apparently a trained opera singer who spent years living above a Soho brothel) is extraordinary. With his face painted white and his mouth a stitched, black gash, his voice ranges from the gravelly depths of a twisted Tom Waits to a screeching, accusatory falsetto and, as he squeezes his bright green accordion, there's a mesmerising fusion of gypsy, pre-war Berlin and sheer bad taste which proves irresistible.
New Players, The Arches, Villiers Street, WC2. 0870-429 6883. Until April 26. Tickets £19.50-15.