Thrilling? ... The Burlesque Hour with
Yumi Umiumare, Azaria Universe
and Moira Finucane
Burlesque was last year's big Edinburgh thing, writes Lyn Gardner, and there are still plenty of nipple tassles being twirled at this year's festival. But just as West End theatre on its forays into burlesque has failed to distinguish between titillation and tedium, so many of the purveyors of burlesque don't seem to realise that while the strip can be an art form, too often it is just somebody taking their clothes off very slowly. Neither have they worked out that pole dancing is not burlesque, it is something that fat, sad, middle-aged men on expense accounts pay for when they are not getting enough sex at home.
This year's big thing is circus and with the Caesar Twins getting in the hen parties at the Assembly Rooms and Balagan, a pauper's Cirque du Soleil, down at St George's West, this is clearly the burlesque substitute for those who are too young to go out after midnight or worried that they might turn into a pumpkin. Watching these shows one is struck by how much they have in common with soft porn. There's the same air-brushed perfection, the same torturous contortions of the body, the same vacant fixed smiles. Orgasmic it certainly isn't.
