Burlesque and variety go disco in La Clique’s Velvet, a show that’s big, brash, noisy and buckets of fun. Apparently it was inspired by the hedonism and wild parties of the 70s New York nightclub Studio 54, but if that’s true then 70s New York looked very much like the UK’s Saturday night TV of today, with a little S&M and stripping thrown in.
This is a long way from the witty, raised-eyebrow elegance of early La Clique shows, which often found a way to subvert the burlesque form even as they delivered it with poise. Velvet is unironic and, frequently, it’s not just the music but the sexual politics that hail from the 1970s. Perle Noire’s strip is expertly delivered, but plays to stereotypes rather than busting them.
But my, this is one smooth operation, dressed to impress and dripping with glitz. The audience is whipped into a frenzy of disco glitterball nostalgia by the silky voices of Marcia Haines and Brendan MacLean, and with great support from high-energy backing singers and quick-change artists Chaska Halliday and Rechelle Mansour. Throw in some aerial hoop, Craig Reid’s cheeky turn as “the incredible hula boy” and a fetish fantasy, and you have an evening that delivers. One of the main pleasures is seeing an audience out for a good time and getting it, discovering their own inner divas and singing along.
This is not sophisticated entertainment, and the circus acts play second fiddle to the music, so it’s more like a concert than a cabaret. But it knows just what it’s doing, as when the noise comes right down for MacLean’s wonderful and oddly moving unplugged version of the Bee Gees’ Stayin’ Alive. That confounds expectations – the rest of the evening plays to them. But it does so with energetic style.
- At the Famous Spiegeltent, Edinburgh, until 30 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.
