Cabaret fires blanks under the big top
Once again, as part of the Auckland Arts Festival, the Victoria Spiegeltent dominates Aotea Square for the next few weeks.
The pop-up venue, with its oldfashioned charm and rustic aesthetic, is a fitting host for Blanc de Blanc ,a champagne-infused Australian cabaret aimed as an Antipodean take on the vintage French classic.
It’s hard to know what to expect from a cabaret; they’re variety shows, after all, so there’s no set formula. Generally speaking, they should be sexy but elegant, crude but with class, finding the sweet spot between high and low brow and maintaining that balance.
Blanc de Blanc seems to have its sights set on the upper end of the scale, pegging itself as “high-end spectacle” with “titillating glamour”. There are some impressive acrobatics and circus acts interspersed with a stylish erotica, the highlight being a two-handed aerial performance that produces something far more sensual and emotive than those high-flying acts normally do.
It’s R-rated, with plenty of raunchy acts. However, Blanc de Blanc trips up by leaning into that mature rating in the most childish way, mistaking a schoolboy and self-indulgent, sense of humour for adult sensibilities.
MC Romeo and underling Jared fire off innuendo-heavy jokes lacking in originality, cleverness or even humour, while Romeo seems to bask in a selfanointed sense of sexiness that quickly becomes painful to witness.
Some of the routines do find the fun in their naughtiness with displays of golden balloons, artful gymnastics and pop music-infused twerking, all aided by dazzling costumes that give it that air of French sophistication. But even then, the one routine with unabashed nudity seemed to exist solely to goad the audience into a reaction without appearing to have any thought behind it.
The one benefit for the performers is that the crowd laps it all up as if guzzling down the many bottles of champagne on stage. The show does entertain, but when you peel back the noise and windowdressing, there is little going on. Routines are short, sharp and few and far between; the moments of true craftsmanship and talent held up with as much glitter and uninspired debauchery as possible.
Even with its never-ending love of champagne, Blanc de Blanc is more akin to a supermarket bottle of plonk, cheap and sweet enough to get you through the night but lacking the authentic French fizz that would make it taste so much better.