Last week Vaudezilla Productions put on a show at Skokie Theatre called “Schtick With Us: A Vaudeville Burlesque”.

The show’s premise was that Public Access Channel 45 was bleeding money and needed to raise $600,000 during their annual pledge drive to keep alive. Your regular characters were in attendance: A has-been-child-actor-turned-idiot-Jersey-Shore-look-a-like as the pledge drive’s host; his disgruntled ex-wife/manager; an overbearing corporate overseer; a goofy clown who ends up saving the day and a charismatic TV station manager who tries to keep everything from going kaput. Honestly, the play part didn’t do much for me.

But schtick with me…

The audience made the play more fun because it interacted with the on-stage characters by hootin’ and hollerin’ if they liked something, and one woman laughed so hard that the play had to stop for a minute until she collected herself: She had the entire audience laughing with her because she had such a ridiculously hilarious laugh.

But the stars of the night  definitely included Red Hot Annie who debuted a new act as a “painter”. It was adorable and creative. She came out with the board below over her body and instead of taking off clothes, just painted away the red “clothing” on the board with peach-coloured paint. Eventually she painted away her bra and hooked the tassles you see below. It was so cute! In the end a lucky winner got to take the artwork home.

Adorably geeky and engaging magician The Amazing Tomas blew me away with this magic string act. He could make a single piece of rope do crazy things as he entertained the crowd with fast-talking humour.

The Amazing Tomas doing a magical string act during another show, I took this from his MySpace page!

I also enjoyed the singing performance by Siren Jinx, whose voice was smoky and deep, and her personality was energetic and fun. She had fabulous stage presence and looked like she really enjoyed what she did!

Of course, there were other great singing, dancing, fan and burlesque acts that were entertaining and I encourage you to check out more burlesque shows around the city. Burlesque and variety shows not only make for a fun and enjoyable evening, but you get to support dancers, singers, actors and performers that are local and fun!

Dev x

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