LA CLIQUE
London Hippodrome
The boom years for burlesque and variety were during the Great Depression, so it is with a consummate timing that Edinburgh Fringe favourites LA CLIQUE shimmy into the Hippodrome. They bring a show that will wipe away the blues with its sheer bare-faced cheek, ability to send itself up, and a gaudy aesthetic that owes more to the dressing-up box than to designer chic.
In its glory days at the start of the 20th century, the Hippodrome's novelty acts included polar bears, elephants, and lions and tigers. Here, the attractions are of the human variety, and if the performers toy like naughty children with the illusion of danger and transgression, all of them are pussy cats who soon have the audience purring.
Previous attempts to do burlesque in the West End have floundered on inappropriate venues and a deluded notion that the merest glimpse of a nipple tassel is worth 30 quid. LA CLIQUE ups the game through artful attention to detail, seamless stage management and the sheer levels of skill and wit involved. The lowbrow comes with a raised eyebrow here, whether it's in the subverting striptease spectacle of Ursula Martinez's infamous "Hanky Panky" act, or the English Gents (Australians, actually) who combine a slick balancing turn with a send-up of British stiff upper lips. Everything is just so; small but perfectly formed, and a lesson for credit-crunch theatre in working up something from nothing.
Like all circus, there is a touch of the freak show, but lurking amid the supremely executed turns of Yulia Pikhtina's enchanting hula hoop routine is a perfect match of skill and content that gives rise to unexpected meaning and metaphor. Contortionist Captain Frodo's party piece may be dislocating his shoulder, but when he climbs up an increasingly precarious tower made from upturned buckets of diminishing size, his precarious ascent becomes a comment on the absurdity of all human endeavour. David O'Mer's jeans-clad bath-time aerial routine works both as a sexy showstopper and a knowing subversion of advertising's eroticisation of everyday life. And when the naked Martinez produces her final red hanky with a flourish, it is a reminder of who is in control here, and that women's bodies are not just objects to be fetishised.
It's an evening that works on many levels, but most triumphantly as a piece of old-fashioned popular entertainment that is good, clean, dirty fun.
Until February 1
Box office: 020-7907 7097
The Guardian,
Lyn Gardner
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