138. LA SOIRÉE
While Cirque du Soleil (which is returning
to Citi Field in March) always gets everyone’s attention with its spectacofantastical
productions in giganticoenormous venues, there’s another, much more intimate
and far raunchier brand of eye-poppalooza circus/cabaret/vaudeville/burlesque show that
seems to crop up
annually in our local entertainment environs. Last year it was the latest edition of SPIEGELWORLD,
staged in a tent in the Broadway district; this year it’s LA SOIRÉE, a blend of
broad comedy, acrobatics, juggling, prop-swallowing, and song with an array of eight headline
acts that puts you up close and personal to men with more muscles than Michael
Bloomberg has dollars, a naked woman who makes a vanishing red hankie reappear
out of her girly parts, and, among others, a Freddie Mercury look-alike who gets
passed overhead throughout the theatre as everyone sings “We Are the Champions.”
LA
SOIRÉE, which has been done (not necessarily with the same lineup of acts) in a
number of major European cities, has taken over the Union Square Theatre on E.
17th Street, a few steps east of Park Avenue South, and converted it into a red
velvet-draped arena surrounding a circular stage about a six or seven feet in diameter,
just like the one in SPIEGELWORLD. The stage is the heart of most of the show,
but the top of a piano, placed on a raised level, also serves as a frequent
platform, just as does the auditorium itself. That’s when the audience gets in
the act as performers cruise the aisles to engage playfully with selected
playgoers; in one memorable routine, a man is pulled on stage by a talented
Canadian comedienne named Mooky Cornish to be her partner in her so-called
dramatic debut. As she moves him around while speaking her lines, he reads his responses
from the various places on her person to which they’ve been pasted, including
her tongue. Her contortions, designed to direct his attention to the words, are
uproarious, but when the two of them follow this by lip-synching “Tonight” from
WEST SIDE STORY as she stage manages their movement, it brings down the house.
And now, ladies
(and gents with a taste for this sort of thing), let me introduce you to another
specimen of male physical perfection, Stephen “Bath Boy” Williams, an Aussie
who enters a water-filled porcelain bathtub with gold claw feet, and then, shirtless
and wearing a pair of tight jeans clinging wetly to his legs, grabs a pair of
hanging straps and does an awesome series of aerial maneuvers as he wraps them
around his wrists, legs, or wherever, ascending and descending in patterns that
make you fear for his safety, especially when he drops precipitously toward the
tub, head down. Throughout, he spouts water like a humpback whale, the droplets
highlighted by the dramatic lighting. So much water is splashed around that the
entire first row (where I was sitting) was given a plastic cover for
protection, but my wife still managed to get her pretty face splattered.
The promo
material for the show notes that the lineup of acts will change (no program is
provided). The Freddie Mercury impersonator is a slim, long-haired guy
in skintight leather jeans, tiny leather jacket with a big “M” emblazoned on
the back, a leather motorcycle cap, and a painted-on Fu Manchu mustache, who
calls himself Mario, Queen of the Circus (he’s actually a guy from New Jersey).
He has an arsenal of off-color jokes, many about his sexual conquests, but his
pièce de résistance is an astonishing juggling act with silver balls done in
choreographic precision to his lip-synched rendition of a Queen song.
Jess Love does unbelievable
things with hula hoops, while Meow Meow is a raven-tressed, big-eyed, deep-voiced
chanteuse, who has a big second act number where, commanding them like a dominatrix, she picks four guys out of the
audience to hold her in different positions as she delivers a song in German
and English. I had no idea of what she was singing, but the way she ordered
the men to move her about cracked everyone up.
Miss Behave is a
devilish, horn-wearing clown; she dresses in a sexy red vinyl dress emphasizing a substantial derriere, and she clearly likes to swallow, although what
she swallows—like a pair of shears and a metal bar stool leg—would make you
gag. She also has a pierced tongue through which she inserts the stem of an artificial
flower and, well, you’ll either want to see for yourself or will hide your
eyes.
Ursula Martinez,
billed as hailing "from Spain via Croyden," is a tall, svelte blonde who does two
acts. In the second she dresses in a flamenco costume and gives us a dirty language
lesson in Spanish while also singing in both Spanish and perfect English. In her first, she appears
in a tight, gray business suit—jacket and skirt—and then, as she mugs comically, makes
a tiny red handkerchief keep disappearing. Trying to find it, she takes off one
garment after the other, eventually becoming completely starkers, except for
her high heels. She moves from the piano top to down center, or at least down
center from where I was seated, and completes her act—as noted earlier—by retrieving
the naughty hankie from the vicinity of where the sun don’t shine. I was only
several feet away and I couldn’t see how she did it—and believe me, I was
looking very closely!
LA SOIRÉE is a
fast-moving show with absolutely no theme (unlike CIRQUE DU SOLEIL) and capable
of keeping you engrossed, I’m sure, even if the acts are not the same as the
ones I saw. Several of those on view have already been seen in similar New York
shows; I remember Ursula Martinez from last year’s SPIEGELWORLD, and friends
told me they recognized other acts from similar presentations. The music is
very loud (especially during the preshow activities), the fun is raucous, the
atmosphere is uninhibited (the audience is encouraged to whoop and holler), the
humor is bawdy, and you can heighten your reactions by patronizing a bar serving beer and wine; if you check your brains at the
door and let them entertain you, you’ll have a real good time.