BRIEFS

Photograph: James Glossop for The Times

Event: Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Location: Gilded Balloon, Wine Bar

Price: £10

Category: Comedy

Fresh off the boat from Australia, testing their charms on far flung audiences are the BRIEFS boys; sexy, shameless and sparkly. This motley crew of outcasts present us with a pseudo-circus of delicious debauchery and fill the air with their own particular brand of sleaze and sweet.  Reacting to the observation that Brisbane is Australia’s ‘cultural black hole’, these guys will entice, amuse and terrify with their glitzy, glamorous, electric, zesty and overwhelming displays of sexuality and power, combining the most passionate promiscuity of female sensuality with the raw magnetizing power of the male form.

The group intriguingly straddle (both metaphorically and literally) the line between decency and outrage, between peacock displays of colour and steely deadpan humour but there’s no denying that these fellas know how to charm and cajole the audiences into a frenzy, filling the air with an expectant excitement that few new shows are able to generate.

Their performances, neatly interlinked (despite the chaos) by endearingly hilarious front man Fez, feels like a dip into both a primal and theatrical world submerged in sequins and muscle which will leave your eyes and your senses feeling violated (but only in the good way).

These boys look, act and feel like celebrities, even before they have broken into a worldwide market, but I’m certain they have a long and bright future ahead of them as purveyors of beauty, bravery and barminess in this ‘boy-lesque’ show that blends all the fun of the fair with the eroticism of cabaret. You have to attend just to be infected by some of these guys gung-ho gusto!