"Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome . . ." Yes, Cabaret is back and looks set to be the hit of the summer at Chichester.

Be warned, this is the stage show and it is nowhere near as glitzy as the film. Here the Kit Kat Club is the very seedy underground nightclub it was in the original. And when Alexandra Jay's Sally Bowles belts out her songs, you can feel the sleaziness of Berlin at the time of the Nazis' rise to power.

What we know but the characters don't is they will endure 12 years of utter misery and many of them will end their days in the death camps.

An inevitable victim of the Nazi wrath is the cynical Master of Ceremonies (Julian Bleach), whose biting satire will not be tolerated by the new regime.

Bleach plays the role well. He spits out his lines with a viper-like hiss, taking on the audience as well as his political opponents.

His singing voice has a rasp that will remind older television viewers of the gravelly voice of Tommy Bruce from Stars And Garters.

In a scene in which he dances with an ape, finally uttering the words "if you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn't look Jewish at all", it is done with a snarl and the tension cranks up another step.

Cabaret contains two love stories, one between would-be novelist Cliff Bradshaw and the airhead Sally and a more charming but horrific one between Herr Schultz and Fraulein Schneider.

Sally is the very English nightclub singer whose only worry is her career and who she should sleep with next to further it.

Schultz is an elderly Jew dismissing property damage as just the antics of "children on their way to school". Schneider is a lonely woman and, while both want love, she wants, most of all, to survive.

Alexandra Jay, who understudied Martine McCutcheon so well in My Fair Lady, makes a sure-footed dancer and deft singer as the chanteuse Sally.

But it is Schultz and Schneider, superbly played by Brian Greene and Sarah Badel, who capture the heart. Their story draws us into the horror of Nazi Germany.

However, the intimate scenes are overshadowed by the scenes of the club. The costumes are fabulous and the choreography marvellous.

Watch the take on the stormtroopers doing Tiller Girl routines and you will laugh out loud.

Hear the singing of the nationalistic Tomorrow Belongs To Me and you will feel a chill run up and down your spine.

The music is loud and fast and Kander and Ebb, who wrote it, do superb work, especially in the Jewish elements of the score.

Cabaret brings alive Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye To Berlin and matches John Van Druten's play exactly.

For tickets, call: 01243 781312.