Morning:
14°c
Some fares could fall by more than a third when Oyster is extended to every national rail station in London, it has emerged
More...
New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Sarah Frater's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Lea Anderson.
Cast: The Cholmondeleys, The Featherstonehaughs, The Yum Yum Band
Description: Acclaimed modern dance show choreographed by Lea Anderson, a mixture of Busby Berkeley-style movement within a set of complex production numbers. Music by Steve Blake.
Trains: Tube: Angel 
Phone: 0844412 4300
Website: www.sadlerswells.com
Yippeee!!! evokes the world of Busby Berkeley
Busby Berkeley was a great dance director for stage and screen, and worthy reams have been written about his huge show numbers and innovative use of the camera as "roving eye". For roving eye read "peeping Tom", a fact Lea Anderson has grasped with characteristic glee.
The choreographer has looked at all those shots Berkeley took from between legs, from above and his intimately up-close ones of faces and created a 90-minute show that both nods to his innuendo and winks at our ready collusion with it.
In Yippeee!!! Anderson doesn't so much reproduce Berkeley numbers - that wouldn't be possible with 12 dancers when he had hundreds - as evoke his world, the frantic costumes changes in the wings, the nudity, the on-stage/ offstage tensions, the sawdust and stardust, and the sexually charged world that is the theatre.
Yippeee!!! is set as a stage within a stage. The dancers change costumes in full view, just beyond the wing lights, which are positioned on stage. All 12 dancers are showgirls, although given Anderson's Cholmondeleys are female and her Featherstonehaughs are male, the girls come in all orientations.
As we've come to enjoy from Anderson's cabaret-cum-dance productions, the costumes are glam slam-meets-S&M. The dancers look nearly nude in flesh-colour body stockings, and smile with dazzling menace with what look like glittered tooth guards.
Throughout the show they don ever more outlandish outfits - plastic camiknickers with mice tails, masks, furs and combined glittery bottoms and mono-bosoms. They move in an camply ragtag unison, revealing the seductive, hypnotic power of pattern that Berkeley so cleverly filmed. Anderson gives us glimpses of the lines and chevrons and perfectly unified patterning of the military march that he so loved.
Indeed, it's a little-known ballet fact that Berkeley discovered his flair for drilling groups of showgirls not in the ballet studio, or on the MGM lot, but in the US army during the First World War.
Girls, close-ups, army marching ... The problem for Anderson, who has always thrived on sexual subversion, is that despite his Art Deco refinements, Berkeley was already loaded with it. Anderson makes the same joke, albeit with considerable aplomb.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
