Severe Jam Damage

The plan was to meet in the Harbourmaster in the IFSC. On a Thursday night. I can hear you laughing already. I was the first there and it took me twenty minutes to order a heineken. Twenty minutes of standing at the bar and trying to catch ANY of the six staff working there. They were so intent on getting the orders out for the people eating food that they ignored the people in the bar. The harbourmaster is a bit of a shithole. And not what I think of as those good types of shitholes. The old man style pubs like keogh’s or neary’s where you can go and have a nice pint and where the barstaff can handle serving more than one person at a time. Harbourmaster is full of officious suits and ten grand specials who bray like donkeys instead of laughing and drink pints of Stella cos they can pretend to be Marlon Brando when ordering. I hate places like that.

The Barfly and Priscilla eventually showed up, neither of them bothered to even try their luck at the bar and we headed directly across to the Speigeltent. For some reason I always thought that ‘Speigel’ meant ‘Play’ but I think I’m getting my German mixed up. Anyway apparently the tent is so called because of the mirrors that line the wall. They had a bar which was open and serving bottles of German beer. I can’t remember what it was called but it was one of those half litre bottles so I looked QUIITE classy sitting there with my massive bottle of beer while around me ladies in feathers and satin sat sipping glasses of red wine. They were also serving Hoegaarden in those huge glasses, Mrs B said there were a few people at the bar who ordered rounds of these and then had to ferry back and forth as they couldn’t get their hands around three at a time.

It was all very Moulin Rouge. Girls with painted faces, feathered fans, cinched waists and stiletto heels, and boys in berets sprinkled through those of us in the audience who hadn’t dressed up. On stage ‘Heidi Hoopla from Sweden’ through herself through hoops literally as she rolled around the stage keeping hula hoops spinning round various parts of her body. A girl whose name I cannot remember did a fan dance. The Compere ‘Dusty Limits’ sang us a filthy version of the Phantoms ‘Music of the Night’ and then something went horribly wrong. No one is quite sure what happened but it was quite obvious there were problems backstage as the compere was stretching out his time on stage while waiting for the next act. ‘The Extraordinnaires’ (sp) came out and did some old style motown music. They were pretty good and got the audience going, up dancing and singing. Dusty Limits introduced the Usherettes who traipsed up on stage in corsets and suspenders at which point Priscilla grinned and said ‘That’s grand, women in underwear, I’m a happy man now.’ After that there were Can-Can dancers and ‘Lord XP’ the only male burlesque in the show. Of course I was at the bar so missed his act, although Mrs. B assures me he tore off his trousers to reveal well, not much of anything at all. As it was the Club’s 3rd birthday the show ended Miss Lily White who was covered in balloons and popped her way across the stage.

It was a good show, something different, funny and entertaining. However while the Spiegleltent was a unique venue I’d like to see them somewhere that they didn’t have to cut the show short. The Orb were playing at 10 o’clock so in addition to whatever had happened backstage you got the feeling that the show had been truncated to fit into just an hour and a half (with a fifteen minute intermission.)

Tassel Club are back in Dublin in December at the Sugar Club, if you are after something different I’d recommend it.

*Photo from www.thetasselclub.com