Show reviewed: 02/03/26.

Show rating: This is the only show at Arthur Arthouse where you want to see someone in a gorilla suit! A little blue it’s all done for 2026, 5 stars!

The world is on the brink of another global conflict and there are people making all sorts of protests in opposing the world burning and mutually assured destruction reigns across the planet…that was just when I left the house this morning before I had breakfast. The intellectuals and creatives have always been communities of both loud and quiet resistance against status quo; art is a space of dangerous ideas and places of social and political resistance. This is the power of art. Musician and composer, Pete Saunders and burlesque dancer, Belle de Beauvoir, have created a very subtle piece of defiance in the great traditions of both burlesque and jazz being artistic styles that aren’t afraid to tease out, poke a little and fiercely test ideas.

Pete Saunders and Belle de Beauvoir in Blues and Burlesque in the grand tradition of Weimar Cabarets, a grotesque cabaret in Germany, which became iconic for the period, often mocking political figures. This was a glorious hour of music and dance where Saunders and Belle making the perfect odd couple, night and day, creating a moody romantic atmosphere that recalls the classic days of the Jazz Age.

Apart from being relevant, it is a lovely production with original music by Saunders and Belle is a beautiful dancer with clean graceful lines and generous curves where it counts. This is not a one note show but moves between the whimsical, to the absurd to the sublime. I never thought that I’d actually be moved by a feather fan fantasy dedicated to the Birmingham train station. My inner Anglophile was filled to brim of its teapot witj the delightfully British banter.

Show run has ended.

Words by Clara Santilli on 04/03/26.