If you’d told 14-year-old me I’d one day watch a jokey Star Wars parody involving lithe dancers stripping off… well, the word “nerdgasm” springs to mind. Today, I could tell my younger self with absolute conviction that a row of fishnetted derrieres isn’t that erotic when the women involved are also wearing Imperial Stormtrooper masks.
This unauthorized (but apparently tolerated) burlesque spoof of George Lucas’s many-tentacled space opera is affectionate and good-humoured. But it’s just not sexy, funny or choreographically sophisticated enough to please anyone outside the hardcore fandom. Though to be fair there’s probably enough of them in London to fill Riverside’s Studio Two for the length of the run.
The audience on press night – there was of course also a gala night on May the Fourth, aka Star Wars Day – was roughly 40% female but included men prepared to do Chewbacca and R2D2 impressions and one who proudly declared a tattoo that “says ’Rebel scum’ in Aurebesh”. If you, like me, don’t know that’s the basic language of Lucas’s universe, this show may not be for you.
Originally created by Russall S Beattie in a bar in Sydney, and since exported to 40 cities, it’s basically a series of PG burlesque vignettes built around iconic characters from the original trilogy released between 1977 and 1983, plus a few favourites from the wider SW universe like the blue-skinned Twi’lek.
Comedian Pete Dobbing, who alternates with Travis Jay, banters with the audience to cover scene changes and a mop-down of the stage (after dancer Samantha Ho has performed a mutedly lewd carwash on Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder – calm down).
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The opening scene sets the tone and the format of what’s to come. Spoofing The Empire Strikes Back, a female Skywalker gives her rideable Tauntaun snow lizard a heart attack by disrobing to her pants – her back kept demurely to the audience – on the Ice Planet Hoth to INXS’s Need You Tonight.
Then, feeling understandably chilly, she covers herself in the dead creature’s warm, disemboweled intestines. Clever reference. Barely titillating. Great alien costume. Indeed, the outfits are the most impressive thing on display here: this may be the only striptease show where the audience is liable to shout “keep it on!”
Later, one iteration of Princess Leia cavorts in front of R2D2, who sprays banknotes over her. Another prances in the notorious Return of the Jedi “slave” outfit before a giant, animatronic Jabba the Hut, to Notorious B.I.G’s Hypnotize. A female C3PO is divested of her metallic skin to reveal a bodystocking with flashing lights over her erogenous zones (you don’t even see her threepios).
Han Solo (David Devyne) is stripped down to a posing pouch and performs a frenetic, homoerotic breakdance medley with Chewbacca (Dennis Anin-Badu). It’s not really an equal-opportunities objectification-fest though: the two men are the only ones given character credits in the programme, while the women are just listed as “dancers”. They flash thonged bottoms and breasts with nipple covers but they’re often anonymous behind masks, from Darth Vader’s to Greedo’s.
There’s a director, Bec Morris, and two listed choreographers, James Barry and Lisa Toyer, who put in the bump ‘n’ grind moves and keep things burbling along on a cheerfully amateurish level. The show provokes the odd smile, the odd twitch of recognition to a brain that’s hard-wired to Star Wars as a cultural pivot point. But it doesn’t stir the heart, let along anything lower. To channel Yoda – who appears in the closing rendition of Rapper’s Delight – disappointed, I was.
Riverside Studios, booking to Aug 17; riversidestudios.co.uk
