Sing for Your Life

Vegetarians, look away now. Actually, scratch that. Anyone of a sensitive disposition should view this mangey musical revue, performed with a taxidermy cast of clawed, pawed and furred beasts, with the caution of an asthmatic entering a pet shop.

Its boggled-eyed puppets prove the truth in the vegan mantra that the only use for animal skin is for keeping an animal in. The haphazard process of arch-hipster taxidermy artist Charlie Tuesday Gates, the mastermind behind this juvenile exercise in multi-species cabaret, means that they're visibly decaying, shedding clumps of fur and missing digits. There's the baggiest of plots involving a svengalian badger, but the meat of this show is pop song parodies: these animals are brandished, rather than manipulated, in a series of weakly satirical numbers.

The leader of the pack is a riff on Mr Sandman, "sung" in close harmony by a group of grey squirrels bent on evicting their russet cousin from their troupe. A rat version of Queen's Flash is darkly surreal, but other routines have all the sophistication of a toddler doing Frozen with a handpuppet. Britney Spears's "I'm A Slave 4 U" using oiled up chicken carcasses was a lowlight: if the cast make it to the end of the run without catching e-coli it'll be a miracle.

Gates wrote, co-directed, and stars prominently in this piece. Her fine art degree and representation by Saatchi might account for the strong original concept, but there's not enough artistry to compensate for this performance's feeble puppetry and Scout campfire humour. These puppets need putting down.