It was at times hard to see what Patti Smith's thoughtful tribute to Bertolt Brecht had to do with the "theatre of the streets" he celebrated in prose, or with the prostitutes and scrubwomen, sailors and lowlifes he animatedly depicted in song. Technical hiccups notwithstanding, the evening felt too smooth, too elegant, too well-dressed. Even Smith wore a frock for the occasion, a black floaty number that she clutched at nervously as surprise rippled across the auditorium.

But when a lurid argument flared up between a homophobic security guard and a group of gay men in the audience, the character of the evening came into sharp relief. These are songs for the misfits in society, those living outside the norm. And they were being performed by some of the most compelling eccentrics in music.

The London Sinfonietta set the tone exquisitely with a pristine rendering of the overture from The Threepenny Opera, an intoxicating dance of careening discords. From then on, the evening's charge came from the singers who were possessed by their song, rather than simply performing it.

David Thomas sidled on stage like an oleaginous preacher and prowled through Alabama Song in the terrifying wheeze of a satanic imp. Marc Almond injected thrilling drama into Bilbao Song, diving into its romantic eddies, emerging furious and proud. More mesmerising still was the New York singer Antony: he looked like a bashful schoolboy, sounded like Billie Holiday at her most careworn, and delivered Surabaya Jonny in a voice molten with anguished desire.

Fittingly, they were all outshone by Smith herself. For Mack the Knife her voice was lethally seductive, glinting as it sliced through James Crabb's accordion and Lenny Kaye's guitar. Pirate Jenny followed, and that voice suddenly became as mottled as a mangy alley cat. The song was a mess: Smith forgot verses, hit wrong notes and stopped everything to point out her errors. But it was glorious - and, for a brief moment, caught the spirit of anarchy that Brecht sought to inject into theatre.