Naked Boys Singing

In the same week that Kiss Me Kate arrived in the West End from Broadway,
Naked Boys Singing has shamelessly followed it from off-Broadway, where it
has also been running for the last two years.

This over-priced, under-dressed show (top price is £25, for a show that runs
barely an hour and therefore, at least, doesn’t outstay its welcome), has to
be a contender for the truth-in-advertising award. In a show conceived by Robert Schrock that has taken him and no less than 12
other writers to put together, a cast of seven variously endowed talents zip
through a cabaret-style revue of 15 brisk numbers, almost all of which
are performed in the buff.

The opening song, with its promise of a show that offers no prudity or crudity just “Gratuitous Nudity” and likewise lives up to its title, sets the pace. Subsequent songs, most of them inevitably in comic vein, variously celebrate the joys of offering nude cleaning for a living and being a perky little porn star from Illinois (with, as played here, the smallest little pecker in the company). One or two more pleasingly reflective songs, like “Window to Window” and “Nothin’ But the Radio On”, provide a different kind of relief to the one promised in “I Beat My Meat” (whose pay-off is a joke
so feeble that I cringe to remember it). For anyone who saw the recent
Michael Clark Dance Company’s far more explicit portrait of masturbation,
there’s inevitably an air of déjà vu, not to say puerility, to it.

In fact, the whole evening has the air of something juvenile in its mostly
innocent celebration of male, and mostly gay, sexuality. As presented at the
indescribably grubby Madame JoJo’s – a venue so grotty that it makes you
pine with nostalgia for the King’s Head – there’s an added irony. Usually a
drag bar where boys want to be girls, here the boys are showing what makes
them men. The likeable company put the musical numbers across with verve,
not to say nerve, and are entirely comfortable in their nudity. But it goes
without saying that their penises are entirely resistant to any notions of
adhering to Julie Armstrong’s choreography.

For a gay man like me who likes nothing better than listening to showtunes
and seeing naked men, this should be just the ticket. But I can listen to
my CDs and check out the view in the showers at my gym (another gay
phenomenon that makes an appearance here) every morning for free. This show
is strictly for those who either don’t get out much, or don’t otherwise get
it much.

– Mark Shenton