The Hurly Burly Show Live at the Garrick Theatre, Charing Cross 22th April 2011.
What better way to spend Good Friday can there be than going to see a Contempory Burlesque review, as the Hurly Burly show is billed.
This is the mainstream modern contempry take on Burlesque and stars Milly Polly Rae and her Seven Hurly Burly Girls and one not so burly guy in a very highly polished and fast paced show that had the normal range of Burlesque subjects set to a mix of classic burlesque music like the opener to The Stripper through to much more modern songs including a very good routine to the Pet Shop Boys' It's a Sin that by slowing the song down brought the raunch out in it.
The outfits were great throughout and all the girls came across as professional dancers rather than Burlesque performers. This feeling was re-enforced by the fact that only one of them had a tattoo - yes A tattoo and not loads of them!
Still, I loved the routine they did to Strict Machine and they even managed to make Hit Me Baby One More Time almost palatable. But just about every Burlesque show I've ever seen has at least a couple of specialty acts. This show was certainly lacking the talents of say Lalla Morte who dances in a bath of broken glass while you watch her writhe around in the mirror positioned above the bath. Or Lady Ane Angel who dances with snakes as well as breathing fire.
The closest the Hurly Burly Show gets was when they played one of the only tunes by its original artist and Jayne County's If you Don't want to Fuck me then Fuck Off came blasting at us while one of the hurly Burly Girls did a decent fire breathing Ballerina routine that as far as I know was first done about 20 years ago by Patti Webb at the first few Torture Garden events. The only difference was this girl's fire Breathing was fairly basic apart from ending her routine by setting fire to her nipple tassles and twirling them like catherine wheels! You've got to love a woman who can do that in time to Jayne County!
|
Well what do you follow Jayne County with? Well they chose to then have Miss Polly Rae singing Michael Jackson's Bad nice and slow to bring out the sleaze in the lyrics that poor old Wacko was incapable of bringing out himself. But no amount of suggestiveness rescues it from being a bit of an anti-climax after the firebreathing Ballerina.
The second half of the show flew past in a whirl of almost Busby Berkeley routines including an obvious take on Japanese kimono and umberella dance set to (yep) Rhianna's Umbrella and finally we got to see the feather dance illustrated on the shows posters and it was mighty fine. Let's face it: we all love to look at sexy women dancing with merkins and nipple covers and very little else on.
The numbers they let the guy sing on got plenty of the women in the audience going and it has to be said there were far more women in the audience than men and we didn't see any men who had shown up without women either.
The show comes to it's climax with the only original song of the show which gave Miss Polly Rae a chance to introduce everyone to us and to explain what she thinks Burlesque is all about. It is a fitting finale to a fun and enjoyable show and if you've never been to any burlesque nights it's be a good place to start.
If, on the other hand, you have seen everything from small troupes like the Rebel rebels through to the stars of the alternative clubbing scene performing at say Torture Garden, The Rubber ball and Antichrist etc this is the slightly watered down version. Whatever, it was good to see this show ahead of the forthcoming Burlesque week that is coming up.
|
