La Soiree turns circus antics into something altogether sexy and smart

It’s funny. It’s cheeky. It’s sexy. It’s moist. Actually it’s more than slightly wet, for there’s bath water aplenty. There’s also a well-thumbed Mills & Boons novel, puppets sweating in drag, napkins rubbed across female genitalia; same napkins rubbed up against a guy’s nose. These are just some of the stranger props adopted in the circus of sorts that is La Soiree.

Officially launched last night at Perth’s Fringe World festival, La Soiree takes a host of popular entertainment genres and mashes these in the most marvellous of ways. Burlesque blends into blatant striptease; realist acrobatics become surrealist sports; and the line between attention-grabbing cabaret and utter camp stretches thinner than Salvador Dalí’s moustache.

Even the simplest old-school tools of leisurely pursuit such as ping-pong balls, hula hoops, tennis rackets and roller skates are put through the ringer, used and abused in the most absurd of manners.

It was American author and theatre critic John Simon who said “true absurdism is not less but more real than reality” and you kind of get what the guy is saying when you see the normal-looking folk of La Soiree, dressed in all their drag and doing the darnedest things with rubbish bins and rubber duckies. Just the fact that it’s a human being up there sliding his body through a 10” tennis racket or twirling 12 heavy hoops around her waist or zipping 180 degrees flat around a dance pole is enough to leave you gobsmacked, pinching yourself, shocked as you utter ‘This is unreal’. Indeed: This. Is. Real.

There are no individual highlights of this two-hour trip into bastardised vaudeville – all of it is absolutely brilliant. Big rounds of applause then to Cabaret Decadanse for their insanely spot-on puppets who can imitate the world’s greatest divas, Jess Love for her marvellous take on traditional circus theatrics, The English Gents for those well-toned bodies proving man can indeed conquer gravity, Nate Cooper for his drag demolition acts, Fofo & David for their titillating trapeze show, Asher Treleaven for his totally irresponsible take on sex, Ursula  Martinez for her self-run Spanish inquisition, Captain Frodo for defying human physics, and ‘Bath Boy’ David O’Mer simply for wearing the tightest Faberge gwarm-busters during his action-packed public bath.

Intrigued? You best be.  Antonino Tati

‘La Soiree’ is on at The Pleasure Garden, Palais Des Glaces Spiegeltent, James Street, Northbridge. Extended season runs fro now until March 7th, 2015. Season details as follows:

VENUE: Palais Des Glaces Spiegeltent, The Pleasure Garden, Russell Square James St, Northbridge
SESSION TIMES: Tues – Thurs @ 8pm; Fri & Sat @ 7pm & 9.30pm; Sun @ 7pm
TICKETS: $35 – $80 (15+)
DURATION: 2 hours with a 20 minute interval
BOOKINGS: Through FRINGEWORLD.COM.AU or at The Pleasure Garden or Perth Cultural Centre Box Office.

Photo captions, top of story to bottom: Bath Boy by Simon-Pierre Gingras, The English Gents by Prudence Upton, and Cabaret Decadanse by James Henry.