The new cabaret room above a Camberwell pub.
Forty-eight seats, a single piano, and a refreshing lack of pretension. We spent a Friday in a room that has, in five months, quietly become the most agreeable cabaret space in south-east London.
The room sits above a Victorian pub of the kind that has been in Camberwell for as long as anyone can remember and may, with a bit of luck, be there for a while longer. Up a narrow staircase, through a fire door, into what was — for most of the building's life — a function room used for wedding receptions and the occasional eightieth.
The collective who run the cabaret took it on a short lease at the start of this year and have made almost no structural changes. The carpet is the original carpet. The pendant lamps are the original pendant lamps. A small upright piano sits on a low platform at one end of the room. There are forty-eight chairs, arranged in a horseshoe around three small round tables, which is exactly enough.
What it isn't
It is not, in the contemporary sense, a venue. There are no surtitles, no programme notes, no signage on the door beyond a chalkboard with the night's running order written in someone's tidy handwriting. The bar is the pub's bar — you order downstairs and bring your pint up. There is no green room, no production manager, no curtain. The acts simply walk through the audience and start.
This sounds slighter than it is. The lack of apparatus turns out to do a lot of useful work: it forces the performers to begin without the conventional theatrical wind-up, and it forces the audience to pay attention earlier than we are used to. By the time the first number is two minutes in, the room has already settled into a quality of attention that more formal venues take a full set to achieve.
The lack of apparatus does a lot of useful work. The performers begin without the wind-up, and we pay attention earlier than we are used to.
The night I saw
The bill on the Friday I attended was four acts: a jazz vocalist working through a set of standards she had clearly been rearranging for years; a stand-up poet whose material was three-quarters new and a quarter rehearsed; a duo who played accordion and saw, separately and together; and a closing act billed only as "Maeve" who sang four songs accompanied by the house pianist and left without an encore.
Each set was twenty minutes. Between sets, ten minutes for drinks. The whole thing started at eight and was over by ten-fifteen, which felt, in the era of three-hour bar shows that begin at half-past ten, almost decadently considerate.
What works
Two things, really. The first is that the room is the right size. Forty-eight people is enough to make a crowd, not so many that an act feels alone. The second is the running order — sets are tight, transitions are quiet, and nobody is asked to fill more time than they have material for.
These are small details. They are also, in cabaret, the difference between a good night and a long one.
What to watch for
The room runs every Thursday and Friday until the end of the season. The bill rotates, with a regular core of about a dozen performers and rotating guests. Tickets are eight pounds on the door, cash or card, with no booking system — show up at half-seven if you want a chair near the piano, otherwise expect to stand at the back, which is also fine.
I will be going back. If you live anywhere south of the river, so should you.