Writer: Steve Antin
Composers: Christina Aguilera, Sia, Todrick Hall and Jess Folley
Director: Todrick Hall
It is always a shame to see shows launched directly into the West End before they are ready because, regardless of the hard work of everyone involved, they may never get another chance. Despite its out-of-town premiere in Manchester, unfortunately, Steve Antin and Todrick Hall’s Burlesque: The Musical, based on the 2010 film, is some way from the storytelling clarity, character development, and performance polish needed for its run at the Savoy Theatre, and the commitment of its cast cannot make much of this muddle.
Choirgirl Ali doesn’t fit into her traditional Iowa community, and when she discovers her true mother Tess runs a burlesque club in New York, she heads there in search of inspiration. With the club threatened with bankruptcy and Tess’s despicable ex-husband Vince causing trouble, Ali arrives at the wrong moment to confess who she is, but just in time to help.
Running for over 2 hours and 45 minutes, including 30 full and partial songs, Burlesque doesn’t know where its story is or how to weave together primary, secondary and largely irrelevant additional narratives into a coherent and slick production. The result of which is a show with numerous subplots and digressions, multiple songs for everyone, even if they don’t need them, and one-dimensional characterisation that creates little investment or deeper understanding of what anyone wants and why. In a highly predictable rom-com format, it takes a very long time to get anywhere and even by the interval, almost 1 hour and 20 minutes in, the audience has been told the same information repeatedly with minimal progress.
Part of the problem is too many characters and too few actual plot points; there is the lead Ali and her unknowing mother Tess who pass each other with little interaction except about the dire fate of the business; the club maître d’ who wryly introduces the dancers, all of whom get at least one example of their set to perform spread throughout Burlesque; there is the bartender-dancer boyfriend Jackson who Ali falls for, embarking on a mutual attraction immediately despite a girlfriend the audience never see, and two villains, Vince and Nikki with unclear motives.
The show bounces around New York, in and out of these storylines, in largely disjointed fashion, staging scene after scene with little purpose. This is exemplified by Vince’s song in Act One, Ammo, which begins with him sneaking around the club at night looking for evidence to use against Tess, but soon spreads into the streets of the city where he dances with the ensemble on some upturned bins before ending with the fade into Jackson’s apartment where Ali is staying. None of that makes sense, but it gets the show to the next scene. And that is the core problem: Burlesque seems constructed from the songs, many of which have been added, opportunities for the leads to sing lots of things, without fleshing out the story or offering much emotional range through the music.
Almost every song is belted out by the performers, and there’s no denying that relative newcomer Jess Folley has an astonishing vocal power as Ali, as does Orfeh as Tess, but neither gets to do more than yell their singular feelings at the audience. Hall’s numbers are numerous for a character with little substance, performed with energy, joking that his “back hurts from carrying the show”, but the choreography isn’t yet slick enough, with the ensemble looking crowded and unfinished. The show aims to dazzle, but too often Rory Beaton’s concert spotlights just blind the audience as they rotate into your eyes in almost every number in Act Two.
Another few intensive months could have sharpened up the book, slimmed down the excessive numbers and fixed the repetition, taking the story down to a more manageable two hours or so. Everyone has worked hard, and the performers are giving their all, but it’s all just too soon for Burlesque: The Musical, and it would be a shame if this is its only shot at the big time. Unfortunately, as its tagline suggests, ‘life isn’t fair’ and this is not yet fabulous.
Runs until 6 September 2025
