Ever see an
attractive cosplayer at a comic book convention and wish you could see them
naked? Of course you have, which is why you’ll probably enjoy Nerdlesque, a
monthly burlesque show with a rotating nerd theme. This month they did a comic book motif as part of the Brick
Theater’s Comic Book Theater Festival.
As both a theatre critic and a comic book reviewer, my journalistic
integrity required
me to experience Nerdlesque first hand and report back to the comic book
community about the performance.
For those
not in the know, Burlesque has become cool and hip amongst the It Crowd in New
York, and Nerdlesque is not intended for dirty old men in raincoats. Rather the audience was comprised of
New York’s hipsters, and the crowd about 50% women. While the performances are very sexy, the focus was on
humor, camp and fun. That doesn’t
mean that there aren’t gorgeous women taking off their clothes, it just means
that Nerdlesque is very self-aware, and not sleazy. 
Hosted by
the team of Dick E. Lovejoy and Makin' Whoopee (Which I suspect aren’t their
real names), the show included dance routines with ladies dressed as Jean Grey
from X-Men, the obligatory Wonder Woman, and female versions of The Joker and
Robin, along with a lass costumed as Seven of Nine from Star Trek (The hosts
pointed out that there are Star Trek comics, so this wasn’t cheating).
If women
aren’t to your tastes, you’ll be happy to hear that there were a couple of male
exotic dancers, and no one should be surprised that one of them was dressed as
Doctor Manhattan - blue penis and all.
So how
naked do they get, and can you take a date to this sort of thing? Well, aside from the blue penis, no one
else got completely naked, and one male performer remained almost entirely
fully-clothed. There were
G-Strings and pasties involved in all of female acts. A recurring gag in burlesque is the use of gimmicky pasties,
themed around the costume, and there were several clever ones here, such as
Hazel Honeysuckle’s Seven of Nine costume that used borg implants to cover her
nipples, or Mary Cyn’s Joker outfit with tiny grenades (Remember the grenade
scene from Dark Knight), and after Dangrr Doll took off her Robin costume, her
breasts read “Pow” “Bam”.
The audience
had numerous couples, with the women seeming to enjoy themselves, while the
gentlemen avoided enjoying themselves too much (If you know what I mean). As with many of the shows at this
venue, there’s an after party where you can mingle with the performers. No, you don’t have a chance in hell of
going home with any of them, but you can at least have a polite conversation
about the resurgence of Burlesque as an art form with an expert on the subject.
Nerdlesque
is performed on a monthly basis at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg Brooklyn,
with a different form of nerddom highlighted in each performance. They’ll be back in July with a video
game edition of the show. Yes,
Player Affinity will have in-depth coverage.