A Chippendales show seems like good clean fun. But is it?
Is watching men strip any different from watching women strip? ANTHEA MCTEIRNANgoes to a Chippendales show to find out
FOUR SAILORS, three firemen and a spy walk into a bar . . . No it’s not a joke. According to the world’s premier male stripping ensemble, the Chippendales, it’s the living, breathing personification of female sexual fantasy.
And if the whoops, catcalls and audible intakes of breath in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre on Wednesday night were anything to go by, they aren’t far wrong.
Rolling with the times, the troupe of buffsters have introduced hoodies and hip-hop to the show, so there’s something for everyone in the audience.
But what’s this? There seems to be the need for some sort of building work on stage. You think they would have got all that fixed before the show.
The traffic cones are out and there is a handful of well-oiled construction workers at hand to handle the erection. (Oh do get in the mood. Double entendres are our friend tonight).
It’s all Hi-Viz vests and rude girl Rihanna singing about Rude Boys. It’s time to “get it up”, she sings. Thanks for the building advice Ri-Ri.
There are a lot of major incidents tonight. Now there’s a bit of concern about a fire. The Prodigy’s Firestarter accompanies a conflagration (is that the collective noun?) of firemen wearing vests and caressing axes. It’s definitely getting hot in here. So hot that vests must be ripped off for relief. The Chippendales get through a lot of vests. Their mothers must be raging.
After the fire is extinguished, there’s an international spying tryst. “The Ultimate Girls’ Night Out”, as they describe it, enlists the help of that ultimate lady fantasy James Bond. Mr Bond leaps around brandishing his weapon. There’s a bed. He manages to make leaving his socks on while wearing a shirt look faintly plausible as foreplay.
The Chippendale Bond talks – so that’s good. Women like men who talk. The fantastical sexual requirements of women are quite modest, it would seem.
The show is a cost-effective production. Three chairs, a bed, a lot of vests, some body oil and some hats. The profit margins must be massive. And the audience supplies the extras. There is no shortage of women eager to be plucked from their seats by a Chippendale.
“Me and Dave have been all over the world and we have found some of the horniest women right here in Dublin.” Bet they say that to all the girls.
Next up after Dublin on the touring schedule are Kaliningrad in Russia and Algodones, New Mexico, where, and I’m speculating here, the girls will wrest the “horniest girls in the world” crown from Irelands grasp.
