The shenanigans that have been reported since the original production in Manchester and Birmingham need not concern us here.
Whatever went on that resulted in the takeover of the production by Todrick Hall who is now credited as director, composer, choreographer and actor is something for others to address.
The only question we ask here is: Is it any good? Based on the 2010 Christina Aguilera/Cher film, it is the story of a young Iowa girl Ali (Jess Folley) who leaves home for New York in search of her birth mother and a job, though not necessarily in that order.
Circumstances contrive to get her into a fading Burlesque club owned by Tess (Orfeh) who is facing imminent bankruptcy and bank foreclosure.
With a scenario that loots freely from many other shows and films, including Gypsy, Showgirls, Moulin Rouge and Coyote Ugly, the young girl accidentally becomes the star of the show and pulls the club back from the brink in the nick of time.
While there is plenty of razzle-dazzle in the athletic dancing and costumes, none of it suggests genuine burlesque in the slightest, whether traditional or modern.
The songs written by Hall, Aguilera and Diane Warren are relatively anodyne musical numbers and the choreography is flashy but primitive. The singing is very much in the X Factor style, effortful and oversung. Lung-busting volume and diaphragm-stretching sustained notes are now considered the barometer by which to gauge great performances when in fact they are nothing of the sort. As Frank Sinatra told Liza Minelli “Not every song has to be the National Anthem”.
Similarly the fact that the dancers display acrobatic skill with backflips and splits (and the girls are almost as good) doesn’t make for good choreography, particularly if much of it is crotch-thrusting, sub Fosse style gesturing.
Todrick is an amusing performer, doubling as the club’s Emcee and Ali’s choir mistress back in Iowa and it is never dull though when the standout piece (and the nearest thing to burlesque) is a solo from gay performer Chardonnay (Jake Dupree) that is saucy, raunchy and funny you know there is something missing in the rest of the show.
The leads are nice but the absence of chemistry and sex in a show that is all about the tease is a serious impediment. And some of the costumes are howlingly cumbersome – never mind the Village People/Jean-Paul Gaultier creations for the fellers – the mechanical/robot black and silver creation Ali is forced to wear makes her look like a human Transformer though the twin girls in brassieres representing pimento olives for a Martini Dance is not without wit.
The real disappointment is that it is all so desperately conventional; there is not one scintilla of originality and consequently little to mark it out from a slew of competent shows that go in one eye and out the other without undue fuss. It is an efficient, unremarkable, uninspired, derivative musical, theatrical pablum for undemanding tourists and coach parties.