I never thought I’d find myself amongst the heaving, hormonal throng of women watching the Magic Mike Live Show at the Hippodrome in Leicester Square. But there I was, two rows from the stage.
Although I spotted a few bride-to-be sashes, I expected more penis whistles about. I guess though, as we all know, you can’t really scream and shout when you’ve got one of those things in your mouth.
And there was a lot of screaming and shouting. In fact, it was primal. The audience was a frenzy of oestrogen, not a common denominator between us other than we were female and there to get wild. It was like we were taking part in an ancient women’s bonding/mating ritual. Group hysterics and losing your mind over a fella are time old, but I’ve never been part of anything like that crowd before, even while at an all girls high school.
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The show was a sensory overload, not least because the crowd was as entertaining as what is on stage. I’m pretty sure the girls next to me were with their dad or older male relative who did not stop filming once, even when two of his probably daughters received lap dances.
The show. Sexy is subjective isn’t? But this is almost an irrelevant tangent. Once the audience’s collective brain switched over to reptilian, once the first sex act was simulated; the first franks and beans grabbed; the first chiselled abs exposed, the guys could have been going through a calisthenics routine with bins on their heads, and we still would have continued to lose our minds, such is the power of the collective.
Structured almost as a cabaret show, Magic Mike Live is MCd by a charming Bridget-Jones-every-girl type character from Doncaster who at one point announces that earlier on that day she had been shaving her toes to one of the tunes the lads were gyrating to.
The show’s segments were created on the premise that this was our fantasy, and a sexually empowering, consensual one at that. You could quite easily pick at this and it would unravel, but why bother? No one books tickets for the show to be cerebral about it.
No, it’s about those men taking us through the steps of “our fantasy”, as sensitive and emotionally intelligent hunks who might bring us a hot water bottle when we have our period, but who also know how to throw us down and ravish us when we want it.
They showed us this by dancing while wearing suits, dancing just in undies, dancing with their tops off - those boys could move.
Our fantasy also involved being serenaded, pert naked bums, Irish dancing (curve ball), sexy aerial acts, and interpretive dance sequences about foreplay and sex, one of which involved water, acrobatics and a suspended stage. And lap dances.
Despite not wearing my glasses out of fear one of the guys would see them as an opportunity to make a bookish girl’s fantasy come true, I still got lap danced on and it was weird.
My friend took a video of the moment, which will never see the light of day, that captured the awkwardness of it brilliantly; my hands refusing to hold onto the man and my head bobbling back and forth like I needed to tighten my neck screws as the pants-cladded chap thrusted me about making my wildest erotic dreams come true, while looking a bit dead behind the eyes himself.
There’s also a new cocktail bar at the casino, purpose built for the show which carries on the empowerment theme.
Named Permission, it’s for pre or post-show drinks and nibbles, cheese and charcuterie boards and comes with turquoise walls, bouquets of flowers, comfy seating and a piano player near the bar.
If you’re not one for casino vibes, this snug little den is a great little spot for a post-show debrief to descend into a chat about weird sex stuff.
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The cocktail list is a very consensual selection of empowering tipples– try a Magic, Attractive, Connected or a Confident. I went for the Charismatic – a strong drink for a bold gal such as myself - that came garnished with a chunk of crystallised ginger and a sprig of rosemary. It would have worked just as well as pre-show fuel as it did alongside the cheeseboard we scoffed down.
Oh, Magic Mike Live Show. What a thing to have been invented. The boys may have brought the Mike, but the girls in the crowd brought the magic.
Address: Hippodrome Casino, Cranbourn Street, Leicester Square, WC2H 7JH
Website: magicmikelondon.co.uk
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