A cocktail of excitement, nerves and trepidation can be felt among the packed audience at Club Burlesque’s first foray into Taranaki.

Hostess Verity Johnson has that all under control, assuring the TSB Showplace their Theatre Royal is in “safe, sparkly hands” for the racy R18 show touring from Auckland for the Right Royal Cabaret Festival.

‘Miss V’ sets the tone in fitted red corset or “slutty tomato”, making any of the crowd who dress modestly feel they aren’t displaying nearly enough cleavage.

That crowd is a mixture of girls’ night groups and date night couples, aged from Millennials up to the Forgotten Generation. Though none are forgotten by Johnson.

An elderly couple on their “first date” are told to think of her when they became intimate later.

The club’s owner goes on to raucously reel in the chatty, giggling crowd with lewd comments aplenty: “You have rhinestones on your nails for me? I have rhinestones on my boobs for you!”

She showcases her knowledge of the area with her appreciation for the nude Mothers and Daughters statue on New Plymouth’s Coastal Walkway. She teases audience members for their town of origin, before launching into a poem.

She wants more than to stare at the ceiling during the missionary position or to die beside the whiteware at Noel Leeming. “I know why you’re here, you’re bored,” she suggests. “You want the hypnotic, erotic.”

How can the crowd exorcise their conservatism? “Jesus!” is one punter’s guess.

But the night is about rewriting feminine eroticism. It is also about sparkly boobs, so with that, it is finally time to witness the evening’s first dancer, Miss Kiki Kisses.

Kisses slinks out behind two giant feathers, supported by two male dancers before stripping down to a sheer corset and little else to ‘Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend’. Hoisted up by said dancers, she loses the corset and is left in a sparkly g-string and spangled bare breasts.

The next act is as dark and daring as the first was light and sweet, with the arrival of Miss Cherry Bomb, accompanied by dancer Mr Nikolai. She doesn’t mess around before removing her bra and setting two hand-held candelabras aflame for a daring dance to heavy rock.  

Next up is Miss Nicole Marie from Te Anau who showcases her dancing skills to a country medley of ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much’ and ‘These Boots Are Made for Walkin’. She is dressed in cowboy boots and blue sparkly g-string leotard, her red locks cascading below her Stetson.

Miss Kiki Kisses then make a return to the front of the drawn stage curtain, creating hilarity with her mime and strip-tease, taking off one coat at a time to reveal … [spoiler averted]. She is finally left with little but tassels on torso and tail. The crowd whoops as she gets her bottom tassels spinning during her rendition of ‘Murder on the Dance Floor’, before ending with a faint.

“Don’t look at her, look at me!” Miss V feigns, after changing into an emerald number and offering vegetable-related quips before introducing the show’s acrobatic number, the “pocket rocket”, Miss Ruby Rebel.

This pint-sized performer enters the stage where an aerial hoop is ready waiting. Her red corset comes off to reveal an itsy bitsy teeny weeny ruby red g-bikini. She removes her stockings while in impossibly flexible positions on the ring. The audience gasps as she contorts her body around the ring, in splits and back arches, leaving little to the imagination as she removed her bra too for the grand finale.

But it wouldn’t be a feminist’s night out if a man didn’t get his kit off too, Miss V announces to cheers. “It’s what Kate Sheppard would have wanted”.

Sandwiched between Miss Nicole Marie and Miss Ruby Rebel, Mr Kalani dances to Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’, dressed sombrely in priestly robe, dog collar and glasses. They remove his robe, leaving him in dress pants, boots and white shirt to dance provocatively to ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’.

The boots and pants are the first to go, leading with the leather belt and finishing with the stripper pants, ripping upwards from the ankles.

A sparkly surprise awaits beneath. That is taken off too and Kalani is passed a sheet to cover his front, along with a bottle of beer – which is swigged and suggestively sprayed, to audience cheers.

Then it is time for Miss V to finally give into her front row hecklers to “turn around”. She twerks in her sparkly emerald leotard to a sped-up version of ‘Proud Mary’, accompanied by Kalani and Nikolai to round the evening off.

After a curtain call to rousing applause, the dancers head to the Showplace Bar where a pianist was playing, giving the audience a chance to mingle and grab selfies with them.

For this night at least, Taranaki show-goers have their conservatism stripped off of them. If the smiles on many faces are any indication, this sensual night may not be their last.

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