A musical wander through Victoria Wood

Looking For Me Friend: The Music of Victoria Wood Assembly Rooms (Venue 20), until 28 August ★★★★

Few British entertainers have matched Victoria Wood’s capacity to fuse wickedly precise social observation, endearingly grotesque character work and jauntily catchy musical comedy. Certainly no-one else has written a song rhyming “chip shops” with “zip tops”. In this warm, affectionate set, British cabaret doyen Paulus and expert arranger and accompanist Michael Roulston offer a gentle, jaunty tour through Wood’s back catalogue. The songs suit a cabaret setting and the performers’ assurance and amiability bring out their poignancy and heart as well as the carefully observed absurdities and gleefully tongue-twisting lyrics.

Wood’s best-remembered numbers are delivered with relish and a wicked glint, from paeans to chippies and shopping to innovative uses of the Woman’s Weekly. There are more plaintive and contemplative pieces too, arcing from adolescent crushes to solitary bereavement. Paulus weaves in personal material about what Wood has meant to him throughout his life, touching on childhood anxiety and family dynamics, performance training and aspiring artistry, body image and sexuality. Her role in his and Roulston’s decade-spanning friendship is celebrated too.

In Wood’s work, matters such as class anxiety and relations between men and women are illuminated through the telling details of quietly simmering discontents or joyous little victories. Paulus pays tribute to her ear for that word that hits just the right note: think pacamac, viaduct, macaroon. This precision gives life to the comedy but can also feel quite period specific – as, to an extent, are the social and cultural conditions they testify to.

Wood was ahead of her time in some ways but also very much of it, and those who weren’t there first time round might struggle to latch on to certain things. (The show’s heavy use of beloved quotations could baffle them too.) For devotees looking to dust off the coconut matting, however, this is a treat.