At the Hippodrome casino in Leicester Square, the dancers of Magic Mike Live! are having their #MeToo moment. Based on a film starring Channing Tatum, the show loosely follows the story of a down-on-his-luck hunk finding work as a stripper.
But some members of the audience are confusing fiction and reality. The dancers tell us that at least two women a week are thrown out of the show because of inappropriate behaviour. “They scratch you, bite you, lick you, anything you can imagine it’s probably happened,” says Myles Harper, who has been in the show since it opened in 2018. Each week, he says, “at least once or twice, there’s touching, pulling, being rude. Then we get women who actually fight each other.”
Ross Sands, who was personally chosen as a dancer by “Chan”, also recalls some horror stories. “It’s way stricter for girl dancers. I think it’s hard to compare the two because men don’t have the history. “We have very clear boundaries about what’s acceptable”, he said.
Britain’s theatres seem to be suffering from a general collapse in good manners this year. In April, two women were dragged from a performance of The Bodyguard in Manchester. We have also had reports of fights and public urination in the West End.
Money never sleeps on Wall Street
Director Oliver Stone put a lot of thought into the set design of his film Wall Street (1987). In the search for a painting that would capture the essence of psychopathic banker Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, he settled on Joan Miró’s Paysage, right, which hangs in Gekko’s office in the film. Now Paysage is up for sale at the Treasure House Art Fair in Chelsea. In Wall Street, Gekko boasts: “This painting here, I bought it 10 years ago for $60,000. I could sell it today for $600,000. The illusion has become real, and the more real it becomes, the more desperately they want it.” Isabelle Bscher of Galerie Gmurzynska, which is selling it, tells us there will be a fierce bidding war this weekend and expects the painting to go for millions. Life imitating art?
Kerry ruffles literary feathers
Former US Secretary of State and one-time Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is still keeping busy at 79. As well as running climate policy for President Joe Biden, Kerry has been pestering the best-selling British author Philippe Sands. When the pair finally met at the Oxford Literary Festival recently, Kerry gushed about Sands’ book East West Street and asked if he could turn it into a blockbuster film. Sands turned down the offer. “It’s a book, not a film,” he told us.
Stephen Fry on Jewishness
“People still introduce me as quintessentially English Stephen Fry,” said the president of Marylebone Cricket Club, right, at the opening of its new Jewish exhibition this week, “and very rarely am I front and centre as a Jew. But I am a Jew. This exhibition is proof that Jews have been able to utilise their love of the game, to express it and to do what they can to make the game a better game.” Former prime minister Theresa May joined Fry at the launch of the exhibition.
Starmer’s chilling past
Has Sir Keir Starmer been hiding a chilling secret? His old university pal, John Murray, reveals he and Starmer funded a lads’ holiday in France in the Eighties by selling “illegal” ice creams on a beach. He told Politico’s Westminster Insider podcast that he was arrested by the gendarmes but Starmer escaped handcuffs. Thrilling stuff, but it isn’t quite running through a field of wheat.
125 years and still going strong
13 Charing Cross Road, the small shopfront a few seconds’ walk from the National Portrait Gallery, is celebrating 125 years as an art shop. The building, which is currently home to Cass Art, was first opened in 1898 as Reeves & Sons. It has supplied paints and other paraphernalia since to famous customers including Claude Money, Winston Churchill and David Hockney. Contemporary fans include the journalist and part-time artist Andrew Marr. “My family has a long and proud history of supporting artists and, continuing this legacy, our mission is to fill every town with artists,” said Mark Cass, CEO of Cass Art.
The other pyramid
For those missing Glastonbury, there’s another pyramid stage at Battersea Power Station. As part of the Wandsworth Fringe Festival, Oxford boffin Gervase Clifton-Bligh has engineered a light exhibition called G23LAB. The light show, he says, is based on the proportions of the mysterious Pyramid of Chephren at Giza . He explains: “When I was young, I wanted to be an astronaut. That never happened, but I was lucky enough to deliver a software system I had invented to NASA and thought to myself “Mission accomplished”, kind of. Now though we have built our very own spaceship, and the sky’s the limited once again.”
