LE Canard Brûlée, York's new Continental Comedy Cabaret show, will be presented by the Burning Duck Comedy Club in The Micklegate Social's Den, on Micklegate, on February 20.

"This is a new venue for Burning Duck, hosting the best in international comedy and cabaret," says promoter Al Greaves. "Our debut night will be headlined by German performer Johannes Dullin, who's spent the past 14 years working in some of the most progressive theatre and performance spaces in Europe.

"He'll be doing his 2018 Edinburgh Fringe show, Come Along And Bring A Friend!, which was reviewed by Broadway Baby as 'absurd, silly, postmodern and completely unpredictable'."

Support comes from Carla Pol, who moved from the Italian countryside to Leeds expressly to discuss rabbits, Italian people and the funny side of diversity. "Carla’s act has been described as being ‘like a silly Russian doll interweaving her disconnected visual world and chameleonic storytelling'," says Greaves.

The night will be hosted by Fred the Puppet Landlord, as performed by York puppeteer Freddie Hayes, part of The Strut Cabaret team that also performs downstairs at The Micklegate Social. "I’ve attended a few events in The Den and I'm looking forward to presenting this show in this intimate basement performance space," says Greaves.

Dullin has performed Come Along And Bring A Friend! at Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, the birthplace of Dadaism in the early 20th century. "Dada was an art movement formed during the First World War in Zurich in a negative reaction to the horrors and folly of the war," says Greaves. "The art, poetry and performance produced by Dada artists is often satirical and nonsensical in nature, a tradition to which Dullin owes a lot.

"I really enjoyed Johannes' show at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, so when he said he was coming over from Europe to book a mini-tour of the UK, I was keen to offer him a date in York, particularly in light of uncertainty over what will happen to performers who want to visit the UK after Brexit, which is already having an impact on the cultural scene."

Greaves notes that last July the Womad world music festival organiser said "artists had given up trying to visit the UK to perform because entering the country had become difficult and humiliating since the Brexit referendum".

"I recognise a slim majority voted in favour of leaving the EU, but it wasn’t clear what people were voting for and I’m sure many who voted for Brexit would not have done so in the knowledge that it could reduce their access to cutting-edge experimental German theatre," says Greaves.

"Having said that, the Dadaists were known to rebel against logic, reason and bourgeois thinking, so perhaps Marcel Duchamp might have voted to leave the EU after all?"

Le Canard Brûlée avec Johannes Dullin, en Come Along And Bring A Friend!, The Den, Micklegate Social, Micklegate, York, February 20, 8pm. Limited tickets are on sale at £5 at burningduckcomedy.com or on the door from 7.30pm.

Charles Hutchinson