★★★½☆ Queen of the Burlesque pays homage while investing a 21st-century feminine sensibility.

Adelaide Festival Theatre
June 13, 2016

Having grown accustomed to Cabfest audiences of my generation and older, I couldn’t help but notice the complete contrast with the full house of mostly young women glammed up to the nines à la Betty Page to see Dita Von Teese. Von Teese is the queen of the neo-Burlesque, paying homage to the golden era of the art form, but investing it with a 21st-century feminine, dare I say new feminist, sensibility. Yes, only a merkin, pasties and g-string are all that separate her from her birthday suit by the end of a routine, but Von Teese’s disrobing is a form of self-expression rather than an object of male sexual gratification. This isn’t a show for dirty old men in raincoats. It’s Dita who has the power and she dictates the terms.

I need to make a disclaimer. As a gay man, the titillation factor was out of the picture (although Von Teese did have a couple of buffed male assistants), so pleasing me was going to be hard work given she could only flick the switch on my cerebral and aesthetic sensors. Notwithstanding the above, I was mightily impressed. Von Teese performed four of her most famous routines – the Martini Glass, the pink bucking bronco, a fan dance and an opium den finale, and the women in the audience whooped and screamed loudly – garment by garment, pose by pose. My cerebral sensor was impressed by the way the show worships the full figured women. Von Teese herself is the classic hourglass, but her routines were interposed with routines from her hand-picked support artists Natasha La Colico, Catherine D’lish, Ginger Valentine, Perle Noire and Jett Adore representing a diversity of colours, shapes and sizes. Even cellulite was celebrated. My aesthetic sensor was roused by Von Teese’s spectacular props and costumes and her flexibility. I would be happy to get one sock off as efficiently as Dita peels off those stockings.

However, the glue holding everything together was host Murray Hill, a drag king playing the dirty old man who had a range of quips and repartee that kept the laughs coming and the audience fully recharged between acts. Absent the arousal factor, I doubt whether I could have lasted longer than the ninety minutes plus interval, but I can see why Von Teese and her brand of sexual fearlessness has consigned Germaine Greer to the interchange bench.