Briefs is back at their gorgeous, silly, athletic, sexcellent antics, this time at L’Euro Grande in the old European Foods Warehouse in Northbridge. L’Euro Grande is an 800-seat venue with a raised thrust stage; it is a massive space to fill, which, of course, is no problem for the well-equipped Briefs boys.
They first brought Dirty Laundry to Boorloo FRINGE WORLD in 2023, and as Briefs director/founder/host Fez Faanana (Shivannah) explains, the show is a response to lockdown times when we got a bit sick of looking at the same person day in day out, and the feeling of needing to get things off your chest, e.g., air your dirty laundry.
This reprisal of Dirty Laundry in the big warehouse space feels slightly different from the 2023 iteration, though it’s no less spectacularly entertaining. There’s a bit more distance between the crowd and the boys, but that’s ok, the people in the back now have a great view.
The opening group number is a nod to Busby Berkeley with oversized powder puffs as props. Each individual act is loosely tied to the Dirty Laundry theme, especially when they use the hollowed-out washing machines stage left. Pre-show, Shivannah had asked the crowd to write their dirty secrets on slips of paper, which she read aloud mid-show, much to the shock and delight of the crowd. The raffle ticket winner always gets a special treat from the boys – they sat her centre-thrust and performed a number to increase Briefs Factory’s ‘artistic merit’ in the eyes of Australia’s arts funding body. [This arts funding crisis is no joke, though.]
When Shivannah does her feather dance, I think to myself, Vogue-era Madonna could never. When Thomas Worrell does his aerial number, I think to myself, how does he put ballet on a hoop on a string in the air? When Captain Kidd (Mark Winmill, Briefs co-founder) sets his hula hoop alight and starts swinging it around his body, I think to myself, THAT WIG IS GOING UP IN FLAMES. [It was fine.] When Brett Rosengreen in his frosted curls caught swirls of air in his billowing white cape at the front of the stage, I think to myself, that must feel amazing.
And of course, we have the beautiful, multi-talented Nastia (Luke Hubbard) and Serenity (Dylan Rodriguez), queens who can perform death-defying tumbles and twirls on the floor and on the aerial, and still come through looking snatched, not a hair out of place. Dale Woodridge-Brown is the cutest clown in town with his disgusting balloon tricks, and Rowan Thomas somehow performed a striptease while doing a high-speed, rotating version of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
Briefs is only here for a fortnight this time around, so if you were thinking of saving the best for last – don’t. Get in before the boys finish their laundry, and also check out Fruits de la Passion, by Burlesque Noumea, the burlesque company Briefs have been mentoring and have brought to Boorloo from Noumea, New Caledonia.
CICELY BINFORD
Briefs: Dirty Laundry runs at L’Euro Grande at the European Foods Warehouse in Northbridge from 19 January – 4 February. For tickets and more information click here.
