Burlesque Box

Libertease Burlesque bookends this year’s four-week Moisture Festival with an adults-only revue, surreptitiously hidden from the main vaudeville/variété shows (at Hale’s Palladium in Fremont) on the more intimate thrust stage of ACT Theatre. Happily, the curators of Libertease know their feathers from their fluff, balancing artful comedy (including the hilarious Blanche Debris), trapeze, live music, and old-fashioned strip.

The zenith of opening weekend was the bizarre “Porcelain Promenade,” a pageant of prettiness and pooping. Dancers Evilyn Sin Claire and Belle Cozette frolicked like Grecian nymphs, armed with fluffy pink loofahs and aerosol deodorizer sprays. They ribbon-danced with toilet-paper streamers, modestly laid out white satin gloves as seat covers, and straddled two shimmering, rhinestone-encrusted toilets. (The burlesque equivalent of a barn raising, bedazzling each toilet required over 200 hours, 21 gluing “toileteers,” and 20,000 rhinestones.) The earthy chanteuses were wheeled away by janitors in pink coveralls and reappeared with the Libertease cast for a final bow. They looked as fresh as daisies—except for the toilet paper stuck to their bedazzled high heels.

Libertease Burlesque runs April 1–3 at ACT Theatre.