It’s hard to believe it’s been more than ten years since Briefs first hit the Edinburgh Fringe. The five-strong cast still look fresh as daisies and perform with an energy that defies the fact they’ve been working this show for 23 nights straight: we’ll have whatever elixir they’ve been taking. 

Bite Club is Briefs’ brand-new production, and while there are some familiar faces in the line-up, the major new addition is live music from Australian singer Sahara Beck and her wonderful band. Beck’s voice is exquisite. It’s her first time at the Festival, but she has the kind of luminous, soulful vocals that make you believe she was born in a Spiegeltent. As she opens the show, to the whole ensemble giving their trademark fan dance (with a twist of hot-coloured ostrich feathers), there is something so beautiful about the combination of a powerful woman’s voice and a troupe of dancers celebrating male grace and flair. 

Kudos too to compere Shivannah for a) thanking all the fierce women who work behind the scenes (the gender subversion goes on backstage too with a female tech crew), and b) telling us all to put our phones away. It’s become common now for acts to encourage audiences to take photos and tag them online. Rejecting that shows a respect for the art of live cabaret that drips from Briefs. 

^{Picture: Lachie Douglas @somefx}

There are so many highlights in Bite Club, but mention has to go to the inspired striptease by Louis Biggs that manages to be funny, sexy, political and sharp all at the same time. Slipping and posturing on a treadmill he sends up a chain of masculine archetypes, with fewer clothes each time, in between pestering a woman (Beck) who rejects his advances. And it wouldn’t be a Briefs review without mentioning the wonder that is Captain Kidd, Briefs co-founder and surely the love child of a menage-a-trois between Dita Von Teese, Angela Carter’s Fevvers and a very dirty sailor. Swinging from the trapeze, he has a wild energy that he whips into the crowd.

The landscape of queer cabaret has changed and grown in the last ten years, in no small part due to the huge success of RuPaul’s Drag Race (in which a member of Briefs’ other show, Sweatshop, is currently starring). It is so awe-inspiring to see a show that was one of the subversive trailblazers for the genre grow to become a mainstay for the Fringe. You’ll be (1,2,3) jealoussssss if you miss it.

Underbelly Circus Hub, until 28 August, 8.45pm.