KC Fringe "Rumble in the City" review by timlovestheatre

Battle of the Sexes heats up at BDU's "Rumble"

Rating: 4

Rumble in the City

KC Fringe Festival

Like most red-blooded American men, when I am looking for entertainment at 11:00 o'clock on a Friday night I have a few criteria: 1. Blow stuff up.  2. Make it funny.  3. Boobs.  4. Fighting.  But, not necessarily in that order.  Well, Burlesque Downtown Underground provides three out of four with the KC Fringe show "A Rumble in the City"!  This is a showdown between the ladies of BDU and the gentlemen of the BOYlesque troupe.  And believe me friends the gauntlet and about every other piece of clothing you can imagine has been thrown!

Strangely enough while watching and enjoying this show I kept thinking about Opera.  I found similarities between Opera and Burlesque.  Does this make me the first reviewer to compare Burlesque with Opera?  (We won't discuss the Opera Burlesque, sometimes called the naughty-Opera- that's another article all together.)    You see for me Opera has always taken all of the best of the performing arts and blended them together in a sort of super-show.  Opera has acting and theatricalism, great music and singing, dancing, great visuals and effects, gorgeous costuming and even outrageous millinery (that's the fancy-pants word for hat making).    How does this compare to a little Fringe festival Burly show?

Marisa MacKay and the minds of BDU have gathered together some of the best of our local KC performing arts scene and not only blended them together but also allowed them to shine.  They dance, of course, but they also sing, play instruments, wear (and not wear) beautiful costumes while bringing their unique individual talents to the BDU audiences.  In essence it creates a burlesque super-show.  The fun these talents have creating collaboratively with other creative people literally oozed from the show and infected the audience.  Letting the boys and girls play together provides an added degree of energy and comedy to the already amped up BDU performance.  The half naked gals and the boys in their barely-there costumes will titillate audiences of any persuasion; but, this production will also entertain them at a level that compares to any other theatrical production in the Fringe.  The evenings hostess/referee "Madame" Mackay certainly has her hands full with this monster of !
 her own creation!

There is still time to catch a performance of "Rumble In the City" Thu 7/28 @ 8:00 pm and Sat 7/30 @ 9:30 pm.