Alternative Nightlife

When dinner party conversations turn to the latest burlesque act, do you still fake a knowing smile but panic wildly on the inside? Do variety and vaudeville sound like chocolate all-sorts to you? Are you still of the opinion that cabaret is done by geriatric has-beens boring the socks of the blue-rinsed and nearly dead? Are you worried that, instead of a pleasant evening’s entertainment, you’ll be thrust into a strobe-lit den of gothic horror, filled with willy-slicing trapeze acts and corset-wearing midget biting the backs of your knees in the name of performance art, and have so given the whole thing a miss?

Conveniently, there are shows aplenty this week which will serve as a perfect introduction to the Social Club scene. Go and enjoy! Using this handy itinerary, rest assured that you will cease to embarrass yourself in company.
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The ends of the cabaret spectrum couldn’t be farther apart on Thursday. The gorgeous, 1940s-styled Pigalle Club hosts the weekly Kitsch Lounge Riot. You can also have a meal (£45 for three courses, or pay £15 for just the show), and the performer this week is folksy singer Helen Hicks who joins the house band. Guests in recent weeks have included modern vocal-harmony groups and ‘Celebrity X Factor’ contestants. VauxhallVille Cabaret is in south London and a world away. It’s a fiver through the door – or free if you dress to the theme; this week, Madonna – and main meals cost about £6. They have different types of performers – puppeteers, drag queens, hairy gay men doing burlesque – which makes it a variety show. Variety shows are increasingly being referred to by their traditional name, vaudeville, a Victorian word meaning a show of light entertainment that included low-brow music, comedy and theatre.

Vaudeville was all the rage in America in the late-nineteenth century, and it’s from New York that Friday’s The End Of The World show comes. Fleapit orchestras, showgirls, escapologists and more will perform, and there’s food on offer – however it’s not part of your ticket, so it’s technically not a supper club.

On Saturday, Miss Polly Rae and her Hurly Burly Girlys return to the venue they debuted at last April, the Soho Revue Bar. This venue was famed for being the world’s centre of erotic entertainment back in the 1960s (at least, that’s what it said on the sign out front), and the main room still has a couple of poles for sexy dancers. Burlesque can be an element of vaudeville, and usually involves the performer undressing to music with props. The Hurly Burly Girlys are an example of glamourous burlesque: their opening routine is set to ‘Big Spender’ with Polly Rae singing Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ over the top. Also on the bill is Fancy Chance, a outstanding example of comedic burlesque, which most burlesque tends to be. Previous routines have seen her eat a magic mushroom and trip out in the world of burlesque, and also be a jilted bride.

Most burlesque performers are female (Bearlesque are rare exceptions; happily the Whoopee Club is actively recruiting more for their Tournament of Tease at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club once a month), however the Wam Bam Club is only letting boys on stage this Sunday at the Battersea Barge. It’s a variety show with magicans, stand-up comedians and burlesque performers.

On Wednesday 25 make for Clapham, for it is at the opulent bar Lost Society that you’ll find Lost Supper. This is a good example of a supper club. You’ll be served a three-course meal, and, while at the same table, enjoy some cabaret. Paul L Martin hosts (meaning he’ll sing his own songs as well as others with the lyrics cheekily rewritten, and introduce the other acts), with the surreal suburban Lorraine Bowen Experience.

Class dismissed.

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