Now in its world premiere at Berkeley Rep is a show that defies easy categories, but here it goes: It's part post-modern cabaret, part meta performance art, part satire of cabaret cliches, and part playful platform for a single, tireless, talented, madcap international singer and physical comedienne. It's called An Audience With Meow Meow, and it springs from the fertile mind of Britain's Kneehigh Theatre director Emma Rice and this character created by Meow Meow herself, a.k.a. Melissa Madden Gray.

Meow Meow comes billed as an infamous and internationally renowned diva, but as her choreographed cabaret show — backed by two male dancers in tuxedos and a four-piece band — begins to unravel in its second number, the audience quickly realizes that this show will be more Kiki & Herb or Hedwig and the Angry Inch than it will be old-fashioned song-and-dance. Through a series of pitfalls and after the defection of her dancers, Meow Meow is left to improvise and throw together the rest of her show with manic, often hilarious, the-show-must-go-on bravado. She pulls audience members on stage, physically abuses them and herself, and it all works delightfully well until she, herself, starts to unravel.

The latter third of the show finds Meow Meow exhausted and entering much darker musical (and philosophical) territory — fueled by some fake pills and a bottle of red wine pulled from her trusty trunk, which is filled with dozens of props she brings along "for emergencies" — and while some of this works very well, it's here that this fledgling show loses its otherwise perfect pacing. The dream sequence set to the Schönberg song "One Day More," sets things off with some of Rice's signature magical realism staging, and Meow Meow's take on Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees" is especially moving, and prescient.

Rice's whimsical direction throughout is superb and is felt in particular in the closing sequences (of which there might be one too many), calling to mind some of the delightful audience participation and visual surprises of her last production at the Rep, 2013's Tristan & Yseult. And Meow Meow's performance chops, after you watch get run through the physically taxing wringer of Rice's staging and Tiger Martina's choreography, are above reproach. She is a diva and top-notch clown of the highest order, even if she is a self-mocking one.

All told the production proves that Berkeley Rep's earlier announced ongoing partnership with the Kneehigh Theater is a fruitful one indeed. The kind of experimentation, pathos, and whimsy that Rice and her troupe provide, this show included, are just what the local theater scene longs for. Each time they return, I'm pleasantly reminded of just how reliable they are in the surprise department.

Get tickets for An Audience With Meow Meow here, and if you're under the age of 30, make sure to select that option for discounted seats.