In fictions, there are certain recurrent fantasy spaces that are rarely if ever reproduced in reality. I have written before about the fictitious brothel: the vaguely 19th-century red-velvet space with a piano player and card tables and wine. This space exists in slightly altered form in westerns and medieval fantasy and gangster movies; it has existed as a fantasy since Orientalist academic painting of the 19th century (think of the Turkish-bath or harem scenes from Ingres on). Indeed, many fantasy fictions seem like elaborate excuses for portrayals of this hedonistic space – a space that contemporary life does not offer and that perhaps never really existed as comfortably as it is portrayed.
One of my favourites of these stock escapes is a space I have always thought of as Geraldio’s Under The Stars. This was a joke of my parents from the late 1950s: In the small South African town where they went to university, the only social space open in the evenings was a chip truck in a parking lot. The students would go to that square of asphalt to flirt and buy soft drinks; my dad called it Geraldio’s Under The Stars ironically. That was a time of supper clubs in big cities: places with an orchestra and little tables with lamps on them. My dad was picturing a place where you would wear a suit and tie and there were stiletto heels and ice buckets for wine and comedians and magicians and – in my imagination – maybe a pool around the stage with synchronized swimmers, or a staircase that lit up each step that Ginger Rogers stepped on.
You have seen this place in a dozen films; never in real life. A typical representation of it is in the film Goodfellas: The nightclub is called the Copacabana, and Henry, the Ray Liotta character, impresses his date by bribing a doorman and taking her in through the kitchen, in a breathtaking long take. The place is glamour itself: chandeliers, cigarettes, jazz. It is a purely grown-up space – unlike the dance clubs of today, where there is nowhere to sit down, booming hip hop, and a lineup six-deep at the bar.
It has finally struck real restaurateurs, though, that there is a reason that this nostalgic fantasy recurs so often in movies: We miss it. Why not try to reproduce it? And so now there is a trend in big cities around the world, new supper clubs that combine drinking with light or risqué entertainment. These are exclusive places, with cover charges and guest lists. They are meant for a crowd slightly older than that which frequents dance clubs – late 20s up – and they open after 10 o’clock.
A chain called Cirque Le Soir has similar supper clubs in London, Dubai and Shanghai, where patrons are treated to edgy circus shows with a sometimes sadomasochistic aesthetic. A place called The Box, in London and New York, calls itself a “Theatre of Varieties”; its shows begin at 1 o’clock in the morning. In Los Angeles, Beacher’s Madhouse offers song-and-dance variety shows like an old-fashioned vaudeville house.
Canada has now joined the vogue, with a restaurant-circus about to open in downtown Toronto. It’s called Candyland; it sits on a thoroughfare already bristling with martini lounges and bottle-service clubs that cater to new money and lots of it. It’s smartly unmarked, lush and dark inside. I attended a preview of its attractions and was plied with cocktails and canapés served by models in tight dresses. The entertainment descended mostly from trapezes and silks above: lithe acrobats, flame swallowers, a funny drag queen, a Gothy domme girl who sewed her lips together with needle and thread (yes, she did). The mistress of ceremonies was a busty beauty in revealing attire. There is no shying away from conventional gender roles here. I know exactly the crowd this will attract – the dark-suited young real estate agents and entertainment lawyers I like to write about in my fiction, both male and female.
The owner, Michael Ullman, a young dark-suited guy himself, cut his teeth on a couple of more conventional nightclubs. He promises that although the restaurant will open late, there will be no dancing at this one; the music will never be too loud to talk. In a sense, this kind of embrace of the old-fashioned is a rejection of the EDM scene that has so obsessed the media this past year.
Is this entertainment what used to be called vaudeville? Vaudeville, at its height in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was also a mix of entertainments, including circus acts, comedians and musicians, but it was proudly wholesome; it appealed to the provinces as well as the cities. The phrase “Will it play in Peoria?” is said to have originated with vaudeville. Although there was often a titillating glimpse of an actress in a body stocking (maybe playing Aphrodite or Venus, educationally), a man could still take his wife to see it.
The modern incarnation of this variety show has a distinctly sexual frisson to it, and a sense of secrecy reinforced by its exclusive and expensive nature. It aims to recreate a fantasy underground that we know primarily from fictional narratives – Geraldio’s Under The Stars. I hope it succeeds, but I also hope that as it evolves it begins to explore less conventional entertainments and moves into more challenging artistic terrain – theatre, monologue, the abstract generally. That would represent a real cultural change: a return to physically present performative arts for a generation raised on screens.