What a tremendous breath of fresh air. Amid the indefatigable rise of movies cynically re-spun for the stage, this musical adaptation of the 2010 film featuring Cher and Christina Aguilera goes its own eccentric way. With its monster sound, energy and blinding bling, it is no less than Burlesque 2.0.
The original Burlesque brought together Cher’s stadium-sized voice and Aguilera’s “mutant lungs” (to quote a line from the film). Which duo can compare to that? This one, it turns out. You could generate electricity with the combined sound of Orfeh, as burlesque club owner Tess, and Jess Folley as Ali, a small-town singer with a big voice. Ali still blows the roof off this burlesque lounge but the musical is grittier and less sanitised.
The film revolved around Ali’s hunger for fame, with a subplot of financial ruin around the club akin to that in Moulin Rouge. Ali is now a too-loud gospel singer (“Beyoncé trapped in a Taylor Swift body”) who goes to New York not looking for fame but a long-lost mother. So many of the plotlines turn new, unexpected corners.
With music composed by Aguilera, Sia, Todrick Hall, and Jess Folley, it keeps old songs such as the signature tune Show Me How You Burlesque and Something’s Got a Hold on Me and adds fabulous new numbers, big and fizzing and hugely witty, including the rap-infused Call Mama Daddy and the jazzy Ammo.
The biggest surprise is that this reworking is done by Steven Antin, the film’s original writer and director. His musical underworld is not nearly as dark as Bob Fosse’s but not saccharine either, and far raunchier and more outre than the film. Antin’s script is so contemporary that it references Baby Reindeer and contains a show-stopping joke about the Coldplay concert’s kiss-cam couple. The humour seems peculiarly British in spite of the American accents.
Todrick Hall’s choreography is a sensation, with jaw-dropping athleticism, balletic moves and circus acrobatics, while Marco Marco’s “more is more” costumes deserve an award. Hall, also the show’s director, is an absolute blast as a performer. He doubles up as Ali’s old gospel teacher and Tess’s right-hand man at the lounge, blowing Stanley Tucci’s benign gay best friend of the film out of the water.
Ali’s slow-burn romance with Jackson (Paul Jacob French) is cute when it could grate, with French providing a fantastically funny number in Natalie, in which he dumps his ever-absent ex-girlfriend by phone. The song seems coyly to poke fun at the earnestness of the film – an endearing send-up. The show as a whole bares it artifice every now and again, but without indulging in knowingness.
Asha Parker-Wallace, as Ali’s rival Nikki, makes her professional debut with an almighty voice while Tess’s ex-husband Vince (George Maguire) is now a conniving Brit (less panto villain, more Hamilton’s King George III). And where Cher was a kindly fairy godmother type, Tess is a hard nut with fierce energy and a vague resemblance to Michelle Visage.
The whole thing is very RuPaul. There is no lip-syncing, as in the film, but enough leather, feathers, sequins and disco ball lighting for a season of Drag Race. Plus harnesses, thongs and bared, bouncing flesh, too. Jake Dupree, as the gender fluid Trey/Chardonnay, is phenomenal, complete with nipple tassels in one striptease, while Alessia McDermott and Jess Qualter, as the kinky twins Summer and Spring, bring more of the burlesque spirit.
It is over-adrenalised and messy in its plotting, but you forgive the blips. This is a production stuffed with personality, spectacle and wow factor. Come for the nostalgia, perhaps, but stay for the new kicks: bigger, naughtier and camp as hell.