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.