Theatre

Deadwood on the Thames

Alan Hindle | Sunday 31 October, 2010 11:18

The old wild west of North America was finally tamed, trussed up with respectability and at least a seeming adherence to the law. The Bad Men were hung or went into politics, the land and its resources parceled and tucked in corporate pockets. The ambitious spirit of the west’s roaming and hungry adventurers was tapped into capitalism, but its hedonism, lust, eccentricity and taste for violence became more discreet.

As the rules of “decent” society solidified, brothels and gambling houses were shut down. Some moved onto the rivers, in the form of steamboats, where the law was a little more liquid. Casinos and whorehouses bobbed along the Mississippi until Prohibition and gentrification finally left them high and dry as well.

Tonight, local burlesquers The Last Days of Decadence bring back a taste of the Old West with Steamboat Bordello, a lusty, busty cabaret with dinner and bathtub rotgut. Featured acts include Hot Club of Cowtown, Gaz Mayall and Ruby Blues of Trash City. All the colourful characters are promised- cardsharps, the snake oil merchants, the belles and madams, the uncivilised rogues and the fashionable fops and dandies. The Dixie Queen will trundle up and down the Thames from 5pm at Tower Pier, and there may still be tickets (£35, or £65 with dinner) so check their site, steamboatbordello.com.

Eventually the Houses of Ill Repute, even the floating ones, were shut down, too. Or driven into even seedier, more shadowy corners. They probably weren’t quite as jolly and boisterous as they seem in the movies, with a jouncing pianist bashing keys for frilly ladies to sing saucy songs to while hookers with hearts of gold beckoned the boys upstairs. Prostitution had previously been a fairly open business. Many towns had a bordello in the centre of town, as men returning from months of lumberjacking or mining were pretty clear about what they wanted- a bath, a hot meal, and sex. Not necessarily in that order. Maybe hygiene wasn’t so much a part of the equation. “Doc! I got mushrooms growing on my Johnson!” “Here, sonny, splash on some of my patented Whisky and Snake Venom Cock Tonic!”

Obviously Steamboat Bordello are just tapping into the fun of the Old West and not actually creating a working brothel! But would it kill them to put a little rattlesnake juice in the booze, just to spice it up and maybe make the stuff multi-purpose? These mushrooms itch something awful…

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