Cabaret, Leeds Grand Theatre, tonight at 7.30pm; tomorrow, 2.30pm, 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 848 2700 or leedsgrandtheatre.com WILL Young has returned to playing Emcee, the role he re-defined at London's Savoy Theatre and on a tour that brought him to Hull New Theatre in November 2013.

If Strictly Come Dancing was a one-off false step last autumn, Young has otherwise shown a canny knack for making good career choices: from arguing his corner en route to winning Pop Idol to starring with Dame Judi Dench in the wartime film Mrs Henderson Presents; appearing in Noel Coward's The Vortex at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, to playing the lead in Sky's drama Bedlam, while always keeping the home fires burning on the pop career front.

No decision has been better than to say Willkommen weider to the sinister role of the Emcee in Kander and Ebb's horny, humorous and haunting musical.

Young was already a star travelling across the highest firmament in his first stretch of Cabaret shows and is flying higher still in impresario Bill Kenwright's latest tour of this acerbic political musical, directed once more by Rufus Norris with a dark claw ripping away at the golden glitz.

Young's singing performance still has something of both Rufus Wainwright and Robbie Williams about him, while his Germanic demeanour has grown even saucier, his ghost-faced Emcee's sang-froid being so disturbing amid the rise of Nazism in 1931 Berlin.

Young's fellow 2016 Strictly contestant Louise Redknapp, the former Eternal pop star, takes on the headstrong role of solipsistic Kit Kat Club nightclub singer Sally Bowles. She moves well, even throwing in a handstand at one point; she sings her big number strongly too and has Sally's pucker English accent off to a T, but she is too self-contained to be the sexy loose cannon a la Liza Minnelli.

Charles Hagerty is suitably old-school as conscience-troubled American writer Clifford Bradshaw and better still are Susan Penhaligon's Fraulein Schneider and Linal Haft’s Herr Schultz, reprising his role from 2013, while Katrina Lindsay's black and gold design and Javier de Frutos's camp, classy and even brutal choreography are five-star quality.

After missing yesterday's performances through illness, Young will be back on stage tonight, mesdames et messieurs.

Cabaret, Leeds Grand Theatre, tonight at 7.30pm; tomorrow, 2.30pm, 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 848 2700 or leedsgrandtheatre.com