There’s something truly irritating, something truly grotty and end-of-Blackpool Pier about mainstream burlesque, even in London town!
Too often, it’s saggy tits and asses – male and female! – superglued to bog-standard basques and voices so thin they’re terminally anorexic! Ah, but there is a solution; sheer, knife-in-the-back style, the killer chic co-opted by Grace Jones at the otherwise risible Queen’s Jubilee, best remembered as a rag-tag, wannabee boat people flotilla, serenaded by scrapings from pop’s best-forgotten sewers dying on stage!
Screw that; instead, let’s swan inside the most deathly, soigné hauteur known to truly royal queens, Bioux Boom’s masterly symphony of contemporary cabaret. A modern-day Diaghilev and impresario par excellence, he-together with partner David – have crafted a space, ambience and panache that marries Charles Saatchi chutzpah to The Box’s desirability.
He’s helped enormously, of course, by the thrillingly doomed, fin-de-siecle space of Cafe de Paris itself, modeled after the Titanic’s now-legendary, forever-lost ballroom, which still gives an intoxicating sense of a voyage into unpredictable, unknown seas of hedonism.
And frankly, even my expectations – and those of my dinner guest, the divine Holly Penfield – are effortlessly exceeded. Forget plastic glasses and acid wine straight from a Tesco tap-box, sometimes, only rich depths of fully, adult aplomb and gourmand pampering can soothe jaded hedonists and hungry minds!
Quibbles? None whatsoever! Like the flawless service, cuisine and maitre’d attention, the floor-show blows a fabulous, inclusive kiss to radical chic.
There’s Dusty Limit’s stellar reimagining – and channeling – of Quentin Crisp as a raging 2012 gay sex dog in heat and Frisky and Mannish’s addictive, Alice-In-Wonderland mash-up of Ivor Novello poise with Yazoo, Erasure and Soft Cell’s camp, vocal cosseting, and last but certainly no means least, the scrumptious Kitty Bang-Bang’s sex-kitten circus clown pouting rings of real fire!
So who needs entertainment barely fit for kindergarten, all threadbare double-entendres or less? Me, I’ll take La Reve every time, all biting, Lotte Lenya wit in gleaming, Dietrich drag!
• La Reve @ Cafe de Paris.
• Fridays, 8pm until late.
• 7th-13th May 2012
