Pretencion

Pinchbottom’s Pretencion, Un Cirque De Burlesque is playing at the Elektra Theatre 669 Eight Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Street. It runs one hour thirty minutes with one intermission. It is an open ended show.

The show was in Spiegel World in 2008. It was part of the Underground Zero Festival in 2009. Playing at PS 122 located at 150 First Avenue at Ninth Street for five days.

It’s been said “Pinchbottoms is where burlesque meets theatre, buys it a drink and takes it to bed”.

The show starts with a man (?) name Murray Hill on stage introducing the show. He sits in the front row making comments to the cast members. Actors somersault across the stage. The Ringmaster comes on stage, she has a huge pink wig on, pink dress and the biggest false eye lashes. She says the show cannot go on because the clown can’t find himself. He finally comes out reluctantly, strips down to a clown g string. His backside says help. All he says is touch me, touch me, f--k me, f--k me on and on.

A Magician comes on stage saying he can help. He says the answer is in Pretencion. I’ll help you get there. In between there are two strip tease acts.

In the second act they find their way to Pretencion and the answer they are looking for. Three more people do strip tease acts in between there adventure.

They live happily ever after?????

This is not the play for everyone. There is no rhyme or reason to the story. It is not funny or makes no sense. There are five burlesque acts, four women and one man. Except for one women sucking on, well you guess what. It is done in good taste. I was not thrilled at the man, he had no arms per say.

Everyone in the audience for the most part were under thirty. The audience was laughing and hooting. They knew the burlesque characters by name and cheered them when they came on.

Maybe if you are under thirty you might like this show.

The program is on a clear paper. There are no names of the actors. I wonder why? Maybe they don’t want anyone to know who they are. Can you blame them?

Review by Rozanna Radakovich