Briefs: The Second Coming

Amply filling the void left open when the Caesar Twins packed up and left town some years ago, Briefs are back with their testosterone-camp circus stunts and badly-behaved antics. This year they've taken a pair of pinking shears to the show's formerly soft edges and replaced them with a dirtier, fetish-tinged rim, which, in its more inspired moments, is both blistering and funny.

The Briefs version of Crufts sees leashed doggie-boys in leather performing acrobatic tricks for their owners, occasionally going leg-humpingly rogue, as boys in pants pretending to be dogs are presumably wont to do. Mark Winmill's trapeze finale is magnesium-hot, with shades of those Caesar Twins. The producers would do well to hold onto him; a scene-stealer with an intense charisma and an unpredictable glint in his eye.

While the rest of the previous line-up (except compere Fez Fa'anana aka Shivannah) have gone, a fine acquisition is made in Ben Lewis, sleazy strap-artist, fondling audience heads and hoisting himself aloft with a slippery muscular grace.

But there are weak links in this year's show. Dallas Dellaforce viciously lip-synching-for-her-life to movie heroines pushes the savagery too far; monkey-ballerina's dancing, and the cute geeky yo-yo schoolboy not far enough. Even Shivannah's banter has been largely replaced by mime and party magic, and what remains echoes last year's jokes a little too much.

Like most cabarets, if you love them already, you'll still love them. What they definitely do is prove that burlesque has still got legs; albeit hairy ones.