LIVE DANCERS TONITE
Written and directed by David Gillian and Michael Brett, Dancers is a 70-minute “musical comedy episode” set in a seedy go-go club somewhere off Rush Street. Actually the place and its denizens–all gently spoofed by six members of the new SBTH Theatre Company and varying guest performers–are fairly timeless. The intimate Sneakers Annex space, which could just as easily pass for a mid-50s combination truck stop/clip joint (except for Mark Mac Lean’s clever predisco music), teems with the eternally generic: aggressively festive decorations, an obligatory mirror ball, a jukebox that blows bubbles and whose needle keeps skipping in the middle of songs (unless the girls stomp the stage in the right spot), and a postage-stamp stage, virtually in the audience’s lap, where the girls endlessly bump and grind. You just know nobody ever got discovered in a joint like this.
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It’s never entirely clear whether Dancers is a parody, a period piece, or an attempt to have it both ways; accordingly, few moments here prove uproariously funny or bitingly satirical, and a few dead spots cry out to be ad-libbed away. But what’s both refreshing and poignant is how well this show captures the funny-sad, show-biz eagerness-to-please that’s all the sadder when the lounge act really stinks. You’ll find here an unpretentious warmth that the slightest polish would utterly destroy. Strangely enough, this very crudeness makes it all feel like good clean fun.
