Review – A Burlesque Interlude

The opening performance of A Burlesque Interlude left much to be desired. There were obvious shortcoming from several areas, both performance and technical sides, and much room for improvement for the rest of their 5 night run.

Firstly, Ensalada – the Union Pavilion seems quite incompatible with the venue requirements of the performance. The ceiling height and equipment needed for the show are entirely contrary, in order to use poles, silk ropes and aerial hoops the roof has been taken off the venue, which is lovely on a warm summer night, but would lead to further performance complications if the weather was to sour. Also about 50% of the show was unwatchable due to the height of the stage and the flat seating, any ground work was lost completely if you sat any further back than the fourth row. And much of the aerial work had an added danger level due to the proximity of the lighting bar to the silks, hoop and pole, several times in the performance a dancer almost kicked out the stage lights.

Sound techs further marred the performance by putting on the wrong scene music, having music at completely wrong volume levels and being oblivious to the dancers, who were left to try to cue music and microphone requirements from the stage. Almost none of the lighting cues were done correctly, lights tended to come up in the middle of a stage change, or stay down whilst a performer stood on the stage trying to signal that they were ready to begin multiple times. Also the lights at the back of the stage are pointed out towards the audience, right at an uncomfortable eye level, blinding vision of the show even further. The stage hands and door crew added further disappointment to the show’s level of professionalism, with poor stage movements and door staff who ignored constant photography by audience members and allowing people without tickets to enter and leave the venue at will.

In the duration of A Burlesque Interlude, there is an interlude/interval for at least 15 minutes, which is highly unnecessary in a 60 min long show. There was no signal that it was in fact an interval as lights remained down, and a monotonous monologue was played over the PA, leaving many audience members confused about whether or not the show was finished. From an audience stand point it was unnecessary and highly painful. The performance started thirty minutes late due to Ensalada being moved the previous day, so when audience guests were seated at 10pm the stage was still being set up and performers getting ready for 24 minutes. All around, the technical side of putting on a show was poorly executed.

The Fringe is meant to be a festival for the people, but it wasn’t designed with these audience people in mind – obnoxious, oblivious, self-involved bogans who had no qualms about yelling, jeering, taking photos, talking on phones during the performance or indeed getting up and down to acquire more beverages from an outside bar even if it meant walking in front of a performer in the middle of their routine in the main aisle. Also the people outside the venue who hadn’t paid for tickets were allowed to stand at the door way and essentially have a free show.

All these aspects aside, the acts themselves felt under prepared and really not performance ready. Much of the tricks based routines were jerky, and lacked a flow between movements. They could complete the apparatus based movements, but they looked troublesome, and certainly didn’t give audience members that sense of effortless sexiness that burlesque is known for.  The artistic choices in the performances were sometimes questionable, for example Muse’s version of Feeling Good was overlayed with Nina Simone’s which felt like it was in a different key. The final act was really the last nail in the coffin of a dismal hour, performer Katia Schwartz read a poem which felt completely out-of-place from what had taken place previously, and then the other dancer, Scarlet Skyrocket “sang” to a backing track of Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang, it was out of time and out of tune, and after having already watched her over the top cheesy smile for the last hour audience members were walking out.

There were many bumps in their opening night performance here at the 2013 Adelaide Fringe, here’s hoping that with a few more performances under their belt that they are able to put this behind them and work on really delivering a Fringe worthy (NOT cringe worthy) show to their audiences.