IT took ten years to bring The Tiger Lillies back to the West Yorkshire Playhouse, an absurdly long hiatus after their unforgettable Shockheaded Peter show.

Only Kneehigh have rivalled them for making such an instant, deep impact, but unlike the Lillies, the Cornish company have become regular visitors.

It required a commission from Opera North Projects to facilitate the Lillies blossoming anew in Leeds, but disappointingly this Playhouse/Warwick Arts Centre co-production of Lulu: A Murder Ballad will leave town tomorrow after only five performances. If you know the tale of Lulu – not the Sixties’ Scottish songbird – it will be from Frank Wedekind’s plays and the Louise Brooks film. Now, white-painted, panda-eyed Lillies frontman and writer Martyn Jacques has reinvented it as a twisted gothic street opera that is at once Victorian vaudeville yet steeped in Brecht and the Weimar cabaret of Berlin and gipsy music too .

Jacques’s startling voice, falsetto when singing, deeper and dirtier when narrating, dominates a show built around 20 songs as rich with detail, observation and blood as Nick Cave’s murder ballads, performed on accordion, devastatingly beautiful piano and ukulele by Jacques with Adrian Stout on musical saw and theremin and Mike Pickering on percussion and toys that sound like a knife being sharpened.

Ever the anarchist, Jacques’s empathy lies with Lulu, no angel of course but ultimately a victim, who is played by magnetic ballet dancer Laura Caldow with a silence that speaks volumes.

The finishing touch is the stage design of director and visual artist Mark Holthusen that seems to move and change in time with the music while echoing the work of the Surrealists.

Kill for a ticket.

The Tiger Lillies: Lulu: A Murder Ballad, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, tonight and tomorrow at 7.45pm. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or wyp.org.uk