With the proliferation of dedicated new writing venues in London, it can be difficult for a theatre to carve out a particular identity for itself. It’s good to see therefore that Soho Theatre’s identity under Steve Marmion is crystallising as a venue for new work in both the Downstairs cabaret space and the Upstairs theatre space. It’s even better to see Marmion commissioning new work from artists as talented as David Hoyle and Richard Thomas, both of whom have had their taste of mainstream success with varying levels of discomfort.

Hoyle (formerly Divine David), something of a legend son the London “anti-gay” cabaret circuit has performed at Soho before but Merrie Hell came out of the theatre asking him to create a new piece of work based on his film Uncle David. The original idea was to team Hoyle up with Richard Thomas, of Jerry Springer the Opera fame, and create a musical based on Hoyle’s film. The idea of a musical based on a two-hander about an older man and his nephew having a sexual relationship which culminates in the older man killing the younger man so he won’t have to suffer the pain of living didn’t get off the ground amazingly. The collaboration went ahead though and the result is Merrie Hell, which does still describe itself on the programme as “inspired by the film Uncle David” and contains one song called “It’s Okay to Want to Die”, though this seems the closest it gets to its original inspiration.

Merrie Hell is anti-Christmas punk cabaret, with Thomas on the piano and Hoyle stalking the stage in full drag, both bedecked in Christmas baubles. It’s a familiar relationship between Hoyle as the diva/front man and Thomas as the back-up/foil/straight man. Thomas often asks Hoyle questions about his views to trigger the next section in the show (all very knowing, of course). At one stage he even explicitly suggesting that Hoyle answers the question in the form of a song. Thomas’s jaunty music acts as the perfect counterpoint to Hoyle’s vicious satirical lyrics, which are rooted in the political but frequently descend into dark violent surrealism. The two have a strong on-stage rapport and Thomas has enough presence to be very watch-able without ever being in danger of stealing the limelight from Hoyle (God help him if he tried).

There’s a lot of pleasure to be had in watching two very talented artists and performers have a lot of fun on stage and a bit of fun with the audience. Hoyle relishes his own suicidal morbidity to such an extent that it’s hard to know how seriously we are meant to take him and this is a tension he plays with throughout the show. The juxtaposition of jaunty camp with crushing existential angst works well at times. At one point, Hoyle rants about people who expect their children to mirror their own sexuality and how those people should be taken to concentration camps and gassed to a bemused Thomas who responds by launching into a light-hearted number pleading with his co-star to “Camp it up, David.”

There’s something of the sad clown about Hoyle in his painted face talking about mass extermination and being told that everyone’s here to see him do some dancing and make cock jokes. There are also moments of real tenderness in the most intimate song for which Hoyle is spotlit and seated in the centre of the room, talking about feeling alone at Christmas. This apparent honesty and directness is made all the more poignant for the suffusion of shock effects in the rest of the show. Given who the performers are, the attempts to shock were perversely the most predictable elements of the evening, the more so the more they were repeated.

While Merrie Hell is very enjoyable show – for anyone who doesn’t mind a bit of blasphemy or a few jokes about child murder – it doesn’t quite live up to the promise of a collaboration between two such talented artists. There’s some shape to it but every time it feels like it might have found a direction to pursue in order to transcend its form, it pulls back to safer, more familiar territory. It’s great to see Thomas and Hoyle on stage together though and I very much hope we’ll see them collaborate again. Who knows? Maybe “Uncle David: The Musical” will still see the light of day. Now that would be something the West End hadn’t seen before.