Enough buttock already! It’s not a sentiment one is commonly moved to specific, however there you go: properly earlier than Aussie drag/burlesque troupe Yummy’s present drew to a detailed, I felt the buttock quotient to be fairly excessive sufficient. Others could differ, and I may need too, had all these uncovered hindquarters been connected to performers as putting as Jarred Dewey, Iconic’s standout artiste. With Dewey, moustachioed like Clark Gable and crimson of stiletto, the excessive camp and sexual show is subordinated to extraordinary ability – whereas elsewhere, it’s an finish, so to talk, in itself.
There’s a spot, after all, for a little bit of efficiency slap and tickle. However I didn’t discover Yummy’s selection particularly distinctive. In a single routine, an viewers volunteer is given a choreographed bump-and-grind therapeutic massage. In one other, performer Jandruze assembles an outsized sandwich earlier than bringing her bottle of mayonnaise to an erotic climax. In each circumstances, you’d higher discover the premise hilarious, or the gyrations outrageous, as there’s nothing else happening.
Each sketches, just like the others on this 60-minute present, are scored by strident electropop, normally lip-synched by the six-strong forged. Often, our mistress of ceremonies, the drag queen Valerie Hex, seems to pad issues out with boilerplate viewers participation and well-meaning cliches about inclusion and queer delight. Hex brings us closest to the marketed “side-splitting comedy”, however not very shut, as she delivers a prop magic routine to Prince’s When Doves Cry and sashays throughout the stage in costumes that may make her compatriot Dame Edna blush.
When you’re not having fun with any given set-piece – I might take or go away Velma Vouloir’s feather-fluttering stripteases – there’ll be one other one alongside quickly. Jandruze’s hearth act, swirling nice candelabras of flame round her head, makes for a dashing spectacle, and the Britney Spears medley has one wishing for extra such moments of punchy collective choreography. As it's, Dewey supplies the highlights, wrapping himself each which manner round a trapeze, flexing his sinewy body into inconceivable shapes when bringing the present to its acrobatic shut. Right here, then, is a performer with abilities to actually compel the eye – which isn’t constantly the case elsewhere.
At Underbelly competition, London, till 31 July.
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