If you like well-oiled, well-proportioned men wearing hardly anything and dancing, this is the Fringe show for you. Tutu gives us six such well-oiled, well-proportioned men who dance. The opening sequence features the men wearing huge tulle knickers, lolloping and cavorting across the stage to a ballet soundtrack. The next few pieces see the dancers offering a comic pastiche of well-known ballets (Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake’s ‘Dance of the Cygnets’) and the audience whooped and chortled with delight. They veer into other dance styles: tango, ballroom, a saucy street dance (lots of gyrating), a routine that’s maybe meant to doff a cap to Strictly, another that nods to Dirty Dancing, some acrobatics and a circus style routine with hoops and ribbons.
There are moments of genuine beauty in amongst this smorgasbord. Clever use of black light theatre sees an illuminated tutu, sparkling in the dark, drift across the stage. There’s a nicely lyrical aerial routine mid-show that’s elevated to something beautiful by clever costume and exquisite lighting. Clearly, Chicos Mambo are exceptional athletes and seeing the men move with the poise, elegance and strength needed to dance en pointe is pretty spectacular. But these moments are sandwiched amidst a collection of numbers that for all the tulle, wouldn’t feel out of place in a Magic Mike film.
Much of the humour comes from a kind of slapstick style – if you’re someone who finds people falling over funny, you’ll maybe love this. One number features the men wearing large tulle vegetables on their heads and chasing each other around the stage until one dancer bends another over and lashes him on the bottom with a leek. Another number sees one dancer intoning the lyrics of the Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe‘ while the others wave their arms. And another grimly mesmerising sequence sees the six dancers process around the stage in variously slouching robes and expansive wigs, lashing each other with their hair.
If you don’t watch much dance (and haven’t encountered Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake), it’s possibly surprising that men dance with all the elegance and poise of female dancers. One short sequence calls out the extent to which male dancers confront gender stereotypes that’s likely intended as the conceptual heart of Tutu but the giant vegetable heads muddy the waters. Cutting ten minutes out of the show could give it more focus but if you find men dressed as women funny, people pretending to fall over funny or if you love watching handsome men dance in tulle and tiny pants, check this out. If you’re also off to see Pina Bausch in EIF, this may not be the show for you.
Tutu runs until Sun 27 Aug 2023 at Underbelly Bristo Square at McEwan Hall at 15:25