Immersive theatre company The Lost Estate has unveiled its next production, Chat Noir!, which will transport audiences to legendary Parisian cabaret club Le Chat Noir and bohemian Montmartre of the 1890s.
Opening in March 2026 at the Lost Estate’s West Kensington base, the story centres on Rodolphe Salis, the real-life proprietor of Le Chat Noir and architect of its most notorious cabarets, as he prepares his final and most ambitious creation: a feverish celebration of love and madness.
Played by Joe Morrose, Salis is a man aflame with ideas, careering between anarchy and art, chasing one last moment of transcendence before the curtain falls. Tonight he has summoned the greatest artists of his age — the magician Buatier De Kolta (Neil Kelso), dancer Cléo de Mérode, mime Paul LeGrand (Pi the Mime) and chanteuse Yvette Guilbert — to create one final, audacious revue, a night of love, madness, and French art from across the ages. Together they conjure a variety show of reckless brilliance, accompanied by the club’s house band, Les Enfants Vagabondes.
A wild troupe of bohemian musicians led by the young Erik Satie, they perform new arrangements of French late-Romantic masterpieces by The Lost Estate’s composer-in-residence, Steffan Rees. Their ragtag quintet – piano, violin, cello, accordion and percussion – reimagines Debussy’s Clair de Lune, Bizet’s Carmen, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre. Then as the evening unfolds, their performances spill from stage to floor, musicians roaming between tables while a spellbinding sequence of shadow puppetry transforms light and smoke into living art.
Guests will later slip into a world of after-dark delights as they become part of the story, joining the writers, illustrators, poets and musicians who made Montmartre hum.
Parisian cuisine is provided by The Lost Estate executive chef Ashley Clarke and head of beverages Ilya Demenkov, with the world of the show created by The Lost Estate’s head of design Thomas Kirk Shannon. The creative team also includes lighting designer Mike Gunning and couture by Susan Kulkarni.
Chat Noir! opens on March 24, 2026. Tickets here.
Top image: Chat Noir artwork, H Leatherby (image supplied)