Celebrating How We Reveal, Not What We Show
An Evening of Burlesque is a joyous and sexy Celebration of Revelation
A few weeks ago I did an interview with Lucy Ryan who is Creative Director of An Evening of Burlesque and better known as her alter ego; International Show Girl Ivy Paige. I asked Lucy who comes to see a burlesque show and she said that the audience really is a cross section of society. And here’s the thing, the audience at An Evening of Burlesque really is representative. It is your neighbours Geoff and Pam next to the Drag Kings and Queens that you didn’t know existed in your small town, the ‘burlesque curious’, the hen night women, the lads who want to see a bit of T&A mixing with the Queer community and the shy teens escorted by their open minded parents - a true rainbow coalition of people seeing something in this show that reflects and excites them.
An Evening of Burlesque is the UK’s longest running touring burlesque show and has been making its glamorous way around the country for over ten years with a rotating cast of artists. I saw the 2023 iteration at Lighthouse Poole on one of those beautiful late spring south coast evenings when the heat of the day is gently removed from the air and the light softens in preparation for night time.
Burlesque feels like it should be an intimate night time experience, a pleasurable little secret that brings a smile to your lips when you find yourself thinking about it during a business meeting or at the supermarket. By presenting this show in the Lighthouse’s cavernous Concert Hall some of this intimacy needed to be created by the cast. This was a big ask as the stage is wide, the space is huge and the acoustics more suited to scale than subtlety.
The evening’s entertainers and artists gradually drew us into their world. Broadway Director Hal Prince used to say that before amplification became commonplace in theatres, the audience would spend the first few minutes of a show being drawn forward towards the stage as they tuned into the tonality and acoustics of a show. An Evening of Burlesque worked hard to draw us into their world of intimacy, fun and joy.
Hostess Ivy Paige sets and maintains the tone with a clever combination of comedy, song and a saucy line. She is risqué but not dirty and understands exactly how to press her audience’s buttons. There is an old fashioned skill to her delivery with a modern twist that means she is sexy and she knows it, she is sexy and you know it and, above all, she is in control.
Ivy presents a cavalcade of talent, beauty and comedy in a show that feels like a celebration of form and not just the female form because we also have showboy, Sebastian Angelique.
We meet the elegantly vintage Belle de Beauvoir give us Edwardian boudoir vibes, the stunning Velvet Jones who combines jazz age glamour with a modern R&B vibe and also performs a surprisingly seductive reverse strip - she starts off in g-string and tassels and ends up (kind of) fully clothed which is much sexier than it sounds! We are also introduced to headliner Isabella Bliss who performs first as Marilyn Monroe and then as an uber-glamourous curvaceous showgirl who closes out the show with her visually stunning signature Champagne Glass number which I have never seen performed so deliciously.
The show is not just about stripping - in fact the semi-nudity becomes something to admire for its aesthetic beauty while the act of removing clothes becomes an artistic journey. The performers are sexy but rather than selling sex, they are selling fantasy which is altogether more seductive.
There are other elements to the show including the excellent La Shelia Showgirls who opened Act two with a classic fan dance as well as a hot take on Big Spender - both of which took me back to my own show boy days! The comedy elements from Matt Pang and Peggy Sued went down well with the audience too, providing variety in tone and tempo.
The audience reaction was overwhelmingly positive and warm throughout. There was just one lad who had enjoyed his first shandy and couldn’t stop himself from wolf whistling and a group of older people who were happy to see women in their panties but felt that seeing a chap in the same state of deshabille’ was a bit too much and had to leave - or maybe they wanted to get back home in time for the re-run of Smokey and the Bandit 2 on ITV4! It was hard to tell.
An Evening of Burlesque is a joyful show that shares its happiness with the audience. It is also well thought through right down to Ivy’s second half ‘moment with the star’ which is a classic Follies and old school musical theatre device that works so well. Structurally, the first half is an introduction to the theme and the performers whereas the second half moves along faster, with more connection between the acts and the suggestion that there is a kind of story to be drawn out of this piece. I loved the transition from Sebastian’s fire act into Belle’s boudoir - a smooth transition in a variety show is a true thing of beauty!
At the end of the show Ivy encourages everyone to “Be Unashamedly Yourself” and this is the spirit of An Evening of Burlesque . It is celebrating the body as a form rather than celebrating a particular form of the body and it celebrates how we discover the body. Lucy Ryan talked to me about what we reveal as we remove layers and, at the time, I took it literally. But, what An Evening of Burlesque reminds us is that it is not the removal of layers that reveals us but how we remove the layers that really reveals who we really are.
An Evening of Burlesque is touring the UK until the end of 2023. For dates and booking information go to:
https://www.entertainers.co.uk/show/an-evening-of-burlesque
You can follow Ivy Paige on Instagram @ivypaigeofficial