Briefs Bite Club ☆☆☆☆
Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall
WARNING contains male nudity* (descriptions only, unfortunately)
If you were too fussy to get muddy at Glastonbury, then you still have time to get a little dirty in the more refined environment of Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. Briefs Bite Club have come straight from headlining at the Circus Tent to perform in this more conventional venue, although bringing with them a younger, more diverse and tauter crowd than usual. The muscles may have rippled out from the performers but they didn’t stop at the stage’s edge.
The performers greeted the audience at the entrance wearing little more than bath robes. And not the Marks & Spencer kind. They were not going to hide their lights under bushels of fleece. They were there to flog raffle tickets and they were better salesmen than the Saatchi brothers. Yes means Yes.
The performances themselves were best described as a kind of madcap music video. Each one had the same singer, an original song, and a solo or group physical performance using a burlesque or circus skill. But that’s as formulaic as it gets. The actual experience was a bouquet of creativity led by MC Fez. It was joyful, ingenious and quite beautiful.
The first taste of what was to come was a quick-change costume act about all the different types of men there are that hit on you. Amazingly it is done on a fast treadmill. It shifts from a quick-change act to a full-frontal strip tease during the very unironic chorus of ‘‘Look at me, I am Mr Breezy’. We are unsurprised to learn in later acts that this performer is also a ball juggler.
Skin and bravery are a definite theme. The audience held their breath when a thong-clad performer dived into a champagne bowl-shaped paddling pool, twerked, teased, and then trapezed onto an aerial wire. It takes real skill and cojones to do aerial work soaking wet.
There were feather fan dances, sock puppetry and all manner of familiar techniques but done with a twist of ingenuity that made them fresh again. However, the thing that really made this show special was the original songs and voice of singer Sahara Beck accompanying every set. If the show was a series of music videos, they were all in tribute to that vocal talent. Her folksy voice conjures the range of an Aguilera and the edge of an Amy. A real discovery.
So currently, dear reader, we appear to be offering you a choice of two London shows based in circus and burlesque. On Monday we reviewed Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show at the Camden Roundhouse in North London. Tonight, Briefs Bite Club at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. The first has the unparalleled visual originality of Gaultier’s vision, and the second has the rich vocal artistry of Sahara. You have a difficult choice to make, but isn’t that why the tube goes both sides of the Thames?
Briefs: Bite Club Southbank Centre Until 31 Jul then Underbelly at Edinburgh Festival 5 — 29 AUGUST 2022
Review by ANDREW HEBDENQueerguru Contributing Editor ANDREW HEBDEN is a MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES graduate spending his career between London, Beijing, and NYC as an expert in media and social trends. As part of the expanding minimalist FIRE movement, he recently returned to the UK and lives in Soho. He devotes as much time as possible to the movies, theatre, and the gym. His favorite thing is to try something (anything) new every day.
P.S. You may also like to chcek this interview we filmed via Zoom with Briefs co-creater FEZ…
