Night Clubs Reviews

Jun 9, 2003 - Lovely to look at, boring to behold it's the Chippendales at Harrah's Reno

By Jack Neal

Michelangelo would have been on Cloud Nine and in Seventh Heaven not just on a platform glorifying the Sistine Chapel with biblical male nudes, if he'd been painting and scultping the ten handsome and supremely hunky young men of the Chippendale's troupe now playing Harrah's Reno.

You don't have to be female or gay to appreciate the way these young men look. Each has a deeply tanned, fantasy body of pumped arms and pecs, trim, etched abs, legs like the trunks of mighty oak trees and a slim waist to die for. It has to take hours of pumping iron and banging out crunches every day just to maintain. Hats off to hard work.

One might presume the show is intended to be a celebration of the muscular beauty of the male form parlayed into male sex-god symbolism for women eager to get up close and personal with the normally untouchable. Fun is after all fun and there's no reason women shouldn't ogle the opposite sex like men have been ogling the opposite sex since the dawn of man and woman.

What the show intended to celebrate and does, since nothing close to artful entertainment is pretended let alone intended, is good, old-fashioned stripping. Much to the delight of the women in the audience, it doesn't take long for all but the barest thong of necessity to come off. And then, what's left on leaves virtually nothing to the imagination.

In the really good old days with the titilation of great burlesque shows like "Minsky's Follies" strippers such as Lili St. Cyr elevated taking one's clothes off in public to close to high art. Posh surroundings, sophisticated music and the provocative Miss St. Cyr could teach brash amateurs a thing or two about the sensuality business. No such luck here. Miss St. Cyr has long since departed.

What the Chippendale show offers is hunks in rip-away leather, hunks in rip-away levis, hunks in rip-away dress naval unforms, hunks in rip-away thongs, hunks doing almost passable dancing, near-nude hunks peddling skin in the audience, and hunks on stage molesting women. That's right - breast-grabbing, crotch-grabbing molestation. There used to be laws against such things and still are. Women who allow themselves to the publicly fondled are probably too embarrassed by what's happening to them and don't want to spoil what they perceive as fun because of all those shrieking, gaga women looking ecstatically on in wild-eyed disbelief. So they let the exploitation go on. What these guys deserve is a solid left hook and a swift kick to the thong.

Molestation is the worst thing about the show. What comes close is the boredom that sets in about ten minutes in. Every number is the same. Every routine panders. Every moment save perhaps those first few body revelations (out of, oh, so many) bores. There's nothing wrong with a good, sexy male revue, but this one's way out of whack and way out of line.

The Chippendale Show is produced by Louis J. Pearlman who should be ashamed but probably isn't. Ditto for Harrah's management.

The Chippendales can be seen in Sammy's Showroom at Harrah's Reno, 219 North Center Street, Reno, Nevada, at 11:30 p.m. on some nights and 9:30 p.m. on others. Through July 4 (2003). For information call 775 788-2900.