Before going home for the holidays, I watched my first ever burlesque show at The Slipper Room on the Lower East Side.
It was a festive holiday burlesque show, presided over by a woman wearing a thong and knee-high socks, who was ready to show us “the reason for the season.”
This was not the kind of burlesque show where the women wore Santa hats and have tassels hanging from their nipples, but the kind where the women do trapeze stunts over the audience.
I spent the evening with a good cocktail and a nice date, watching half-naked women fling themselves through the air like it was nothing and then unravel onto the stage.
My favorite performer was a woman who was dressed like Eve, which is to say that she was in a nude bodysuit wrapped in fake ivy, as she swung from the rafters with an apple in her mouth while the song “MOTHER ATE” played. For those unfamiliar, MOTHER ATE contains the lyrics “crazy how the very first sin was a woman who ate” and “devoured, no crumbs left in sight.”
Another woman hung from her hair and acted like it was nothing, even though I had a headache just looking at her.
I felt like I did when I was 14 and watched a street performer in Italy hula-hoop with a ring that was lit on fire. I was impressed by the talent and the artistry, with a dangerous sense of “I could do that.”
“I could wind up in the hospital” is more likely.
There was a puppet show. The poodle puppet was wearing cheetah print pants, a cheetah print coat, and black, knee-high boots. I have that exact outfit at home.
I’d had other plans for the night and seeing the burlesque show ended up being my back up. It’s not often that you think you’re going to see a movie and then end up watching women hanging from silks while a Chapell Roan song plays.
Great news people: I have once again gone to the opera.
Having gone and blogged about it four times, I know that this comes as a shock to you all, but nonetheless I did it.
This time I went with my friend Claire to see Carmen. Even if you haven’t seen Carmen, I can assure you that you have heard the music, as it has one of the most iconic scores of any opera, something that I didn’t know until I was sitting in my seat.
Despite it being a French opera taking place in Spain, The Met decided to set the production in the midwestern United States. I did not expect to see a production of Carmen in which the titular woman was wearing turquoise cowgirl boots and jorts while gyrating against a semi truck, but no judgment.
Perhaps there was some commentary in the sense that the story takes place outside of a gun manufacturing factory and they were commenting on the mass gun deaths in the US and/or the American military industrial complex. Either that or I just put more thought into it than they did.
In the end, the story taking place in the midwest meant that when Carmen dances for her love interest she did so on top of a trash can at a gas station, which was a daring artistic choice.
We then proceeded to witness the most toxic relationship known to man. There was a lot of “I have to be with you,” “I can’t be with you,” “you don’t love me,” “I can never be with you” “I can’t live without you” going on in the story. Then one of them died.
In all honesty, as a chronically single person, that’s what just about a lot of you guys’s relationships look like to me. Carmen holds the record for quickest and most pointless death in an opera.
At least she didn’t sing for half an hour about how she was dying. She didn’t even see it coming.
For the opera, I kept it casual by wearing a floor length ball gown that I purchased at a consignment shop last semester. When I bought it, the sale’s woman to ask what I was buying it for. I answered “the opera.”
She asked, “oh when are you going to the opera?” and I had to admit that I had absolutely no idea.
Sometimes, you have to buy the dress for the event that you have no prospects for. Likewise, I recently purchased a dress for the ballet, but have no idea when I’ll be going. I will keep you posted on how that’s going.
Unfortunately, it would appear that while that conversation was taking place, the sales woman forgot to remove the plastic chip at the bottom of the dress, causing numerous people to stare at it at the Met Opera House. I tried to tell them with my eyes that I did not in fact shoplift my ball gown, but that is hard to communicate visually.
The music was beautiful and so was the singing. Yes, I was occasionally distracted by the juxtaposition of a woman belting it in French, acting sexy against the chain-link fence of a weapons factory, while wearing a lab coat, but I still had a fantastic time at the opera.
I can officially say that I’ve been to the one place in town where the audience can chant “Chug! Chug! Chug!” while watching a Shakespeare play.
Technically, I suppose, that you could chant that at any Shakespeare play, but it’d be frowned upon and you’d probably be asked to leave.
At Drunk Shakespeare, however, it is mandatory.
You’re greeted with a double shot of a fruity cocktail and then get to sit down and order more alcohol, while you wait to watch some professional actors *sort of* do Shakespeare. As they would say, “we are professional actors, with a Shakespeare problem.”
Drunk Shakespeare goes as follows: a company of actors perform a Shakespeare play completely sober, except for one of the actors who takes on a principal role while super drunk.
The rest of the actors are bullshitting their way through it while the one actor is fighting for their life.
An actress took four tequila shots back to back and instead of being on the floor, as I would be, she proceeded to play Lady Macbeth. A bachelorette took a shot along with her in order to prove that she was in fact doing hard liquor.
From there, madness ensued.
A black actor who was wearing a white sheet as one of the ghosts, pulled up the white sheet to form a hood and declared “look, I’m Clarence Thomas.”
One actor was told to deliver his lines through the medium of various different impressions, including, Jim Carey, Jack Nicholson, Hannibal Lecter, the woman from the porno, every MTA worker ever, and my personal favorite, John Mulaney.
In case you were wondering what the “woman from the porno” and “every MTA worker ever” sounded like, just know that the actor did the first one by moaning in a high pitched voice, before flinging water in the air, and did the second one by delivering his lines directly into a drawer so that they were completely muffled and incoherent.
At times they had to dip into the audience for their props, which created the iconic line, “Is this an inhaler I see before me?” followed by the actor mumbling to himself, “you did four years at Carnegie Mellon, you can do this,”
Some not at all blurry pictures from someone not at all drunk
Likewise, Macbeth broke character again to address the audience by asking a woman to please stop clapping by hitting her ring against her wine glass, because, and I quote, “this is not a wedding in Vermont.”
Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, did at one point take an audience member’s head in her hands and press it against her chest while delivering the line “come to my woman’s breast, and take my milk for gall,” or whatever she thought the line was in her inebriated state.
Drunk chic on the left
Jokes aside, one of the most impressive things about this is seeing how much work these professionals actually put into their craft. It shows how much work actually goes into putting on a performance like this, because it was apparent that they all knew the play backwards and forwards.
The actress playing Lady Macbeth, who was mild to moderately wasted, still managed to pull it together enough to deliver a perfect monologue from Julius Caesar, and then later another one from Hamlet.
Anytime the audience chanted “chug, chug, chug,” she had to imbibe some more. Again, I would have needed the emergency room.
Subjecting yourself to a pretty nasty hangover, which would possibly involve rushing to a toilet as soon as you wake up, to entertain a room full of people, shows some kind of crazy level of dedication. I hope she earns a fat check for regularly doing this.
I had loads of fun watching a sloppy drunken Shakespeare play, as the bard intended, and I think you should all do the same.
The Tragic Queen 