Briefs: The Second Coming

It is billed as "the love child of Ru Paul's Drag Race and Cirque du Soleil", and while I'm not shy in saying that tagline alone had me sold - Briefs is much more than that.

The wooden shell of the Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent in the Hyde Park Festival Village hides a smoky underbelly glittering with mirrors and colourful tinted lights. You could blame the allure of this exclusive "adults only" venue for the mystifying qualities of the show. You could blame it on all the nipples and glitter eye shadow and ostrich feathers. But whatever you do, don't blame it on the boogie. Briefs: The Second Coming is burlesque with balls, delivered with a glitter bomb. An intoxicating delight, with just a dash of politically charged humour.

The Briefs boys demonstrate some of the human body's most miraculous physical feats including contortionism, acts of strength, muscular bottoms and sock sheathed penises jangling yo-yos. They deliver their talents on a silver platter along with cheeky banter, Beyonce-like polish and a smattering of lip gloss, sequins, filthy comedy, nudity and gender-bending as you may have never seen before.

Our hostess with the most(ess), the bearded ringmistress Shivannah (Fez Faanana), leads a night of variety entertainment. The soundtrack to the experience covers everything from big ballads and disco tracks through to modern indie-pop. This is an elevation of the performance style you'd hope to see at your local gay bar of a weekend, the kind of production you'd expect to see in Amsterdam's Red Light district, Weimar-era Berlin or the Moulin Rogue in a parallel universe. In short, Briefs is absolutely deserving of mainstage status.

Completely devised and developed by a rag-tag creative collective that began its life in Brisbane in 2008 - The Briefs Factory - the team (presently made up of six Aussies and a New Yorker) have been impressing audiences all over the world. The troupe includes Dallas Dellaforce as the brazen (drag)queen of the ensemble; the fresh-faced Louis Biggs, who will suddenly spark your interest in Rubik's Cubes; Evil Hate Monkey, who brings his terrifyingly humorous, award-winning burlesque banana ballet; aerialist/contortionist Thomas Worrell, showcasing exhilarating aerial hoop work; and Captain Kidd, who steals the show with a golden bird bath act fit to take on Dita Von Teese's martini glass routine.

It is extraordinary that The Sydney Festival can be headlined by a show like this: a production that is wallpapering the city with images of half naked men in glamorous showgirl attire. This isn't a tired old sketch of a footy player sarcastically wearing a flowery dress. This is confident and artful, every new act with a playful idea and strong execution. Shivannah isn't too shy to announce that really, the ritual of attending a show like Briefs, in a political climate where the populist Right is fighting fit, is a political act. He delivers his most poignant words while wearing a sequined Australian flag bodysuit, emblazoned with an Indigenous flag. Naturally, it has a matching headpiece. (Laughingly, he adds that he has been representing Australia in this very outfit around the world "without our permission".) 

This is the level of entertainment that you can't experience on Netflix. Briefs will leave you wanting to bust a groove up to Oxford Street and embed yourself on a dancefloor. If you only buy tickets to one show over Sydney Festival, make it the most fabulous one.

The Sydney Festival presents Briefs: Second Coming until 22 Jan at the Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent, Hyde Park