Sunday Feature: Theatre of Burlesque

Holly Gauthier-Frankel: Miss Sugarpuss

From Follies to Folies

“No one ever went wrong putting a half-naked, beautiful woman on a poster.”

By joel fishbane

On a recent trek through the downtown core, I glanced up through the haze of snow to see a friend toting a gun and dressed in black lingerie. No, I wasn’t standing outside Café Cleopatra; my friend was sprawled across a poster hanging in the window of a copy story. Seeing my scantily-clad friends on billboards has become an annual tradition for me. It always happens right before Valentine’s Day and it always means the same thing: Mainline Theatre is producing another show.

“No one ever went wrong putting a half-naked, beautiful woman on a poster,” says artistic director Jeremy Hechtman, currently rehearsing Sexy Dirty Bloody Scary, which is set to open on February 15. Hechtman has proved his theory on several occasions, from the orgy of my naked friends that promoted The Mid-Life Crisis of Dionysus to the poster for the 19th Fringe Festival, in which all pertinent information had been tattooed across a buxom beauty’s naked back. 

Review: Neon Nightz

The Importance of Being Intimate
by David Allan King

I get pumped when shows from Toronto's Buddies In Bad Times visit Montreal. While they've only been imported more recently (i.e. Clean Irene and Dirty Maxine, The Silicone Diaries and this week's Neon Nightz at Centaur's WildSide Fest), Buddies has always been queer enough to give us sophisticated Montrealers a taste of theatre we haven't yet experienced. After decades of launching the careers of some of Canada's top artists, the company currently boasts more Montreal alumni in the Buddies "family"  than ever before, and run by Brendan Healey (who trained in Montreal) there's strong potential for a continued 401-connection that could truly benefit both cities.

Neon Nightz, making its Montreal debut this week at Wildside, is (ironically) inspired by Montreal life, as writer/performer Sasha Von Bon Von (syndicated sex columnist, sex trade advocate and established burlesque performer) recounts her experiences as a Montreal stripper back in the 1990s. Von Bon Bon and dancer/choreographer Kitty Neptune have a chemistry on stage that comes from years of working together in both Toronto and Montreal, and their company The Scandelles,  a hybrid borne from that chemistry, stems from a love of the classic burlesque form that they have already harnessed in the company's earlier works. While burlesque is nothing retro to us anymore (Von Bon Bon's been doing it for years in Montreal at Le Boudoir among other events), the Scandelles have really got it buzzing in Toronto as mainstage fun recently, thanks in part to Buddies' commitment to professionally workshopping and developing all that naughtiness when former A.D. (and Neon Nightz director) David Oiye was at the helm.

CharPo's Picture of the Week; December 22, 2010

The Ladies of Neon Nightz - once described as "where fantasy, feminism, sexuality, art and athletics meet in the world of stripping" - are at WildSide.