Author: Andy Weiss

Tonight’s audience is a modest size – while all seats are taken, there isn’t much of a standing crowd. It is a hot Thursday, the first of summer, and we’re here to see the temporary return of Trixie Little to the New York stages!

Sir Richard Castle is our host for the Wiggle Room, and starts with an apology: “I’m white, so… sorry. I’m male so … double sorry.”

Melody Jane is up first, a new addition to the Slipper Room roster. She crosses a frankly unfindable song with a classic, Peter Gunn.

Tiger Bay takes us to her jungle. I can never get enough of her wide array of funny faces and poses, and the crowd agrees. And so does Sir Richard Castle, who outros her with “I’d love to toss that salad.” Badabing.

Since there’s only three performers tonight for some reason (the start of slow summer season?), Sir Richard gets to fill more time inbetween. He works the crowd, suggesting a threesome with a couple: “A little dick sandwich, hm? I’m Richard, by the way.”

“Any other tourists? I see you’re too terrified to answer the question.”

Richard declamates a poem of hate, opening with “I hate spell check. Duck you, spell check.” I think we can all relate.

Next is tonight’s guest star, Trixie Little, now based in Los Angeles. Trixie starts in a classy dress with a champagne glass in her hand, gives a slight wave to the audience as if to say “I’m back!”, drinks up in a tantalizingly slow drop to a split, and shows off her head stand and back split. A huge balloon drops out of the sky into her arms, and it gets wrestled into submission, bumped and grinded, and rolled between the legs, preparing for the perfect finale: Trixie standing up, opening the balloon, and letting the air blow her hair up, up and away. Yes, Trixie’s still got it!

Time for the gogo box, which Tiger Bay claims first, then followed by Trixie. (Editor’s Note: rumors of the author being pulled onto the gogo box, stripped of his belt, and whipped by a riding Trixie are greatly exaggerated).

Melody Jane opens the second half of the show with one of her signature acts, dressed in a blue gimp suit to the tune of Under Pressure.

Tiger Bay gets physical with an electric eel that seems just as smitten with her as the audience is. After careening all over the stage, the eel lights up to end the act.

The last act for tonight is Trixie again, in a yellow dress, pulling out a banana and eating it in a few quick bites. With the little banana gone, the big reveal comes – Trixie’s dress and hat is the real banana, and she peels off each piece of the skin, twirling around, until she’s halfway peeled. She continues peeling, revealing a black finger, and every piece of clothing she’s wearing has a little piece of banana skin on it. With all the peel gone, she ends with another split and headstand as well as a sideways handstand.

Richard Castle has no choice but to quip “that was a-peel-ing”.

So good to see Trixie on the stage again! We want more.

I hadn’t heard about Naughty Noir before, so I was glad to see a new show. This show has more of a rock’n’roll/biker bar vibe, with a lot of gogo dancing inbetween a few performances. Puss-N-Boots is the host, and the show is after midnight.

It seemed to be a place where other performers come as well. I saw Logan Laveau in the audience, and Ms Puss n Boots announced that Velvetina Taylor was in there too, celebrating her birthday!

Ms Boots introduced the first performer by calling her her favorite ass in burlesque. “I mean, I’m biased, I like everything about everyone. But I’m partial to her. I’m her friend so she sends me nudes, saying ‘this is what I look like in the morning'”. Dandy Dillinger came out wearing a mask and big hair, and flowers in her hair. A lot of work went into that costume, it looked like! After five songs of gogo, Penny Wren was next. I really liked her black and white triangles dress. Puss-N-Boots was last, and I can’t remember whether it was during her act or during gogo that she took a pony ride on one of the photographers (and it seems there were many).

On this rainy Wednesday I make haste from Nurse Bettie to the Slipper Room.

Walt Whitman is on stage, and introduces Sean Blue, who deftly throws a whole lot of rings around. That takes us to the intermission already, and Stormy Leather comes out with the tip bucket while Puss-N-Boots starts of the go-go in green, followed by Madame Rosebud, who, apart from swallowing a full hand holding a bill, keeps it uncharacteristically low-key on the gogo box tonight. Madame Rosebud was an unannounced performer tonight, most likely falling in for Emily Shephard who was on the bill but did not show up tonight.

There is royalty in the audience tonight – I spot Albert Cadabra, Gigi Bon Bon, Ellie Steingraeber, Cassandra Rosebeetle and Lucy Licious all in attendance.

For the second set, Go goat boy replaces Walt Whitman. I don’t think I’ve seen Goat Boy before, because I think I would remember, because this act still needs some work to stitch the performances together – the audience clearly appreciated the performances more than the MC. Maybe with more time and less obvious jokes it could be a good act.

Anyway, we came for the performances, and Puss-N-Boots certainly delivered as The Cat Woman – a shame I can’t find The Marketts song on Spotify.

Chipps Cooney showed us why the Magician’s Guild has threatened to take his license away. I certainly appreciate his deadpan delivery of magic trick explanations.

I had never seen Broody Valentino perform before, but I like what I saw and he would make a great addition to the monthly Boylesque nights! The audience certainly enjoyed the performance.

Rosebud does her David Bowie tribute, and while Freddie Mercury had no trouble coming after David Bowie, he would probably not have enjoyed the pantomimed pan flute rendition of “I want to break free” that Goat Boy gives us. At least it expresses what we all feel in the moment, and I have a feeling that was the whole point of the act.

Sean Blue is a welcome return, this time showering the audience in balls, and actually stripping while keeping his juggle going. At one point, he goes into the audience to ask for help to unbuckle his belt, and then when he’s just in his underwear he goes around the room sitting on people’s laps while keeping his balls in the air. He ends his act by juggling the clothes he just took off.

Stormy Leather closes the night with her amazing “Mrs. Robinson” act, ending naked save for the rope dress she just fit to her body. A classic.

I come in and Hoodoo Hussy is manning the windowsill for the pre-show gogo.

It’s a rainy Wednesday so Nurse Bettie is a little more empty than it usually is. But that doesn’t matter to Shelly Watson, a consummate professional who early on introduces one of the patrons to her balcony. Shelly kicks off the night by singing Night and Day, and then introduces us to the first act: Hazel Honeysuckle is back from a short trip to Venice and Los Angeles, and delights us with her B-O-O-B-S song, adapted for the occasion to feature references to Shelly, the host.

Shelly mentions she read something on “Face Libre – that’s Italian for Facebook everyone!”

For the next act, she asks if anyone in the room is an Arrested Development fan? She introduces someone debuting at Nurse Bettie – and Peachy Kink comes out dressed like a Bluth banana to Abba.

“She popped her cherry here tonight, everyone! Incidentally, I told my last lover that I popped it a while ago, but that I still have the box it came in!”

Shelly introduces the third act of the night – Hoodoo Hussy, who was doing the gogo before, in a classic white and green outfit accompanied by Harry Belafonte.

Shelly sings “Moderate Spender” for a different take on the classic, and as Hazel goes around with the tip bucket, Shelly serenades her with “Whatever Hazel Wants”, and as a result Hazel takes the stage again for the intermission gogo.

I couldn’t stay after the break for Tutu Toussaint and Lillian Bustle – next time.

At 22.20, Shelly Watson opens the night’s proceedings, and calls Velvetina Taylor out on stage, dressed in red and horn-adored, giving Elvis two workouts.

Minnie Tonka performs in purple taking us from Hawaii to Harlem.

Next up is Logan Laveau, taking us through a range of classic burlesque face muscle exercises.

Shelly sings Big Spender for us and takes us to the break, with Logan taking the tip bucket around the room as Velvetina takes the platform for gogo (which interestingly enough on Wednesday is at the back where the performances are, rather than at the entrance like on Thursday. But I digress.)

In the second half of the show, Shelly brings in two women and a man from the audience for a dance-off. The winner is from the Netherlands, where Shelly used to live at some point, so she pulls out her best Dutch, and comments: I once made out with a dyke on a dyke in the Netherlands and it was awesome. And yes, I put my finger on it.

And with that, she introduces Gigi La Femme who moved to Nashville from New York but is back in town this week to make the rounds.

Shelly sings an aria from Giovanni (or at least, that’s what I thought I heard her say) and showed off the pipes.

And that brought us to Sapphire Jones, and just like Logan she shows off a wide range of face expressions, demonstrating her mastery of physical irony.

The show ends with Shelly leading us into a singalong to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” while Sapphire does a second round with the tip bucket, and Shelly sends us all off into the night at 23.40.

With the first show finished, Stache Novak wasted no time to kick off his Midnight Fingers. After demonstrating how to properly strip as a man, he brought out Peekaboo Pointe who demonstrated convincingly how nobody does it better, giving us a salty sailor salute. Velvetina Taylor came out as an orangutan, confusing the crowd into a range of emotions they didn’t think they had. Then after that, Stache professed his love for the next performer, and we cannot disagree: Stormy Leather took the stage and gave us a leather and wax act that did justice to her tagline.

Time for intermission again, and Peekaboo Pointe came out in a leopard print catsuit on the gogo box as Stormy made the room with a tip bucket.

Since the world of finance doesn’t run itself in the morning, it was time for me to slip out and miss the second set, wishing for the first time ever I was red hot molten wax.

Sir Richard Castle opened the evening’s proceedings around 22.20 with a morning wake-up routine that ended with shooting the TV talking about trump. “And that is how you keep production costs low!”

First up is Roxie Le Rouge, from New Orleans, in a classic pink tutu, swinging her leg high, doing a burlesque act that matches the outfit and song in timeliness.

“You’re putting on a fake English accent. That is offensive and vaguely arousing.” chided Sir Castle to an audience member.

Cheeky Lane came out dressed in a beautiful red dress dotted with big roses to the theme song from Virgin Suicides (if you’re old enough to remember that Coppola movie). Her work wife Gal Friday came out dressed in purple for a ride on the night train.

That brought us to the intermission at 11, with Roxie coming out for the gogo and Cheeky going round with the tip bucket.

In the second half, Sir Castle worked the crowd, and brought Lisa from Iceland on stage to share a few cigarettes. “If you’re bored, this is art,” he quipped as he got dressed again.

“They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but I say the asshole is the window to the prostate.”

As he asked for bachelorettes in the room, there was one, getting married to another woman who wasn’t in the audience that night.

Cheeky came out as Ganesha, and even if I’ve seen this act quite a few times, it’s still a favorite. Roxie did a second act wearing a Louis XIV sun queen head piece. And Gal Friday closed the night’s set in orange to Isaac Hayes.

If you were hoping to get Cheeky and Gal do an act together or clown out together on the go go box, tonight was not your night – but Gal still left it all on the go go box.

On to the next show.

Grace Gotham is your host at Sid Gold’s Request Room every fourth Tuesday of the month for Peel Me a Glove.

With the help of Chris Johnson on piano, Grace sings a tweaked take on The Coffee Song.

Chris Johnson invites the audience to sing along on “Stuck in the middle with you”, but feigning disappointment in the audience participation, he quips: “You’re here for I other things. That’s ok. Me too.”

When Grace comments on him only learning that song the day before, he retorts “I mean it’s three chords. I’ve played those three chords before. Just not together.”

Grace shares that she’s celebrating 19 years of living in New York, and adapts a jazzy version of Englishman in New York.

Karina Libido is tonight’s stage kitten, and Grace runs us through her two truths and a lie:

• She was interviewed on BBC
• She won a mud wrestling match with the title “the dirtiest thing”
• She was arrested by a policeman for drinking alcohol on a trans-continental train with said policeman

It turns out that she wasn’t actually drinking when the policeman saw here, but he claimed that it was illegal to have an open bottle of alcohol on the train, so she should drink it. Which she did, after which he arrested her for the actual felony – drinking on a train!

We were a good half hour into the show before the first act started. Luckily, it was a good one: Sapphire Jones came out as a pineapple to Escape (which is better known for it’s Colada’d refrain). And in case you were wondering, while she wasn’t featured in Pretty Little Liars, she is a passer-by in Spider-man 3 and was featured in UFC magazine (but not as a fighter).

And with that, we hit the intermission.

Grace came out for her act, and while I did catch that the big thing she was holding was a tampon. I only connected it to the actual song played after I got home. Well played. “That outfit took a lot of trips to Duane Reade” she shared.

The set closed with one of my favorite performers: Gal Friday, the five alarm fire of burlesque – dressed in purple.
Towards the end of the set, she took a guy’s phone and clenched it between her cheeks – the ones in the back. Only at the end of the set did she return it – or rather, let the guy take his phone back.

“That’s what show girls go when we need a new iPhone!” Grace said, as she introduced us to Gal’s two truths and a lie:

• She does not care about reality TV shows
• Her mother is a tattoo biker
• She once punched a guy off the go go box

She did in fact once punch a guy, after he had already spanked her unannounced once, and really went for it a second time. So did she, punching him over the head, and knocking him off the gogo box. I say, good on her – consent is key, and some men need to learn the hard way!