Review: Between the Sheets

Review: Between the Sheets

There’s more than 24-hour gambling to the newly re-opened Hippodrome Casino. Starring Miss Polly Rae, Between the Sheets is the only burlesque revue in the historical venue’s inaugural calendar of cabaret events. Judging from its spectacular routines full of exuberant...
Review: Boom Boom Club: Prospero’s Tavern

Review: Boom Boom Club: Prospero’s Tavern

Every new season of Boom Boom Club is a milestone in British cabaret. Since it abandoned a weekly format in 2011 to reinvent itself as a franchise of self-contained performance events, the seminal variety show has experimented with the genre in unusual venues like the...
Review: The Hurly Burly Show: Naughty But Nice

Review: The Hurly Burly Show: Naughty But Nice

Is burlesque about the tits? The third West End version of Miss Polly Rae’s singing striptease revue hits the Duchess Theatre with a renewed cast and more sophisticated numbers. Like its previous incarnation, though, The Hurly Burly Show: Naughty But Nice falters...
Review: Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!

Review: Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!

An agitator like Penny Arcade needs no sophistic allegories to dress up debate. Direct and acerbic, Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! combines drama, performance and politics in a relentless exploration of life in the sexual outskirts of America, backed by a liberal...
Review: Miss Hope Springs’ Sunday Soirée

Review: Miss Hope Springs’ Sunday Soirée

Glitter and loud show tunes can only go so far. Inaugurating new Piccadilly venue Crazy Coqs Cabaret with Sunday Soirée, a musical comedy residency conceived under the label of “sophisticamp”, Miss Hope Springs is living proof that drag can be swanky. The diva’s Las...