Ouch! Harsh Review of Hurly Burly Burlesque

Check out this scathing review of Hurly Burly Burlesque by Clive Davis of The Times UK:

"Oh dear, oh dear. After seeing the members of La Clique put on a high-spirited display around the corner at the Hippodrome a few months ago, I was hoping that this might turn out to be another rip-roaring chapter in the rebirth of burlesque. In the event, it was about as exciting as listening to the fire-and-brimstone preachers doing their stuff in the square.

Measured purely in terms of bare female flesh, the willowy Polly Rae and her young troupe of Hurly Burly Girls can claim to be raunchier than the artists at La Clique. But if you are going to put on a burlesque show - an exceptionally tricky concept in our unbuttoned era - it has to be done with a certain amount of panache. The dancers are likeable enough, but their overly coy routines, played out over tinny piped music, are workmanlike and, for the most part, resolutely unsexy.

Worse still, the general presentation is so lacklustre that you find yourself thinking that there may, after all, be something to be said for staying home and trying to laugh at Jonathan Ross's jokes. Humour is certainly in short supply in the patter of the master of ceremonies, Paul L. Martin, whose stand-up routine died a slow death. Someone needs to tell him that being gay is not in itself a punchline.

The tap dancer-cum-juggler Stuart Pemberton had a distracting knack of unintentionally dropping his balls, but there was a smidgin of fun to be had after the interval when the musical duo of Frisky & Mannish deconstructed pop tunes and indulged in a playfully caterwauling bout of one-upmanship on Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better. After a grim hour and a half, however, as the girls came back to bump and grind, I felt so disheartened that I decided to cheer myself up by leaving early and listening to another lecture about the Apocalypse."

I haven't had the chance to see Hurly Burly myself, and everyone is entitled to their opinion but is this guy just out of touch? Can anyone share some positive reviews of the girls or is there merit to this mainstream media review?