I have no idea how ‘interactive’ Magic Mike Live is – and I have no intention of finding out, thanks very much – but based on what I have heard of it, it seems to be the nearest real-world equivalent of the challenge faced by established strippers The Dancing Bears. A group apparently bolder, wilder and slicker (or, if I really must fully enter their world – bigger, harder and longer) than them, The Dancing Bulls, has begun performances a few blocks away. The other lot are pulling in a significant number of patrons, and with a limited target audience in whichever American city the show is set in – one in which there is apparently only enough room for the financial viability of only one strip club – it becomes inevitable that The Dancing Bears start to fear for their livelihoods.
The arrival of B. (Jessie Mei Li) – just B., not even Bea – the daughter of the establishment’s owner-operator, does nothing to assuage their worries. Of the three strippers, only Donny (Darren Bennett) has met the said big boss, Margie, who remains an elusive figure to everyone else, including B., to the very end. This is not, however, the stuff of one of those business turnaround reality television shows, even if that might have been of more interest to me than a deep dive into why the strippers are strippers, and if there just might be more to life than peeling off one’s clothes and accentuating one’s, ahem, assets.
B. rather abruptly announces “none of you [the strippers] are men”, though she never fully explicitly explains what she means by this, or even what they are instead. I wasn’t fully convinced by the show’s narrative arc, in which a group of alpha males are so easily tamed by B. and begin to discuss some deeply personal details about their lives and backgrounds. I would have thought it likelier that the men, or rather the alleged non-men, would have walked away altogether and attempted to start their own enterprise, perhaps a touring production or a move to another city where their show might stand more of a chance of pulling in the sort of crowds they are used to.
Contrived as it is, there are some interesting insights into the thought processes of these men (I’ll continue to call them men, even if B. refuses to do so). Donny is a father to a grown-up daughter but has been an absent father on the grounds that the daughter might have been stigmatised by association at school and then later, in the workplace, because of Donny’s line of work. Trae (Kwami Odoom) gives the rest of the group, and therefore the audience, a long story about bedroom activity with his girlfriend. Geoff (Dex Lee) provides a confessional in the closing moments of the play. B. too has her own personal revelation. Taken together, it’s all very cathartic, and relies, thankfully for me, more on humour than pathos.
The audience are supplied with paddles, each with a thumbs-up on a green background on one side, and a thumbs-down on a red background on the other. They are woefully underused, given that much was made at the start of the show about how the audience was to be empowered to choose “what [they] want”. It was hardly the stuff of the Choose Your Own Adventure book series. The audience assumes the role of attendees at the strip club. Do we want a striptease? Well, if you’re holding up the red side of the paddle, you’ve misunderstood the assignment. Some people, I think, wanted more than a striptease. Were they satisfied? I couldn’t possibly say.
Sit in the front row, or indeed the on-stage seating, at your own risk. Is Tender tender? Not really. It’s not for everyone but in the end, I rather enjoyed this unpredictable and riotous production.
Review by Chris Omaweng
‘Thank you for trusting us with your pleasure!’
The Dancing Bears strip club is failing. Ten covers on a Saturday night. One booking next week. The new club down the street are packing fifty women a night with their twelve-inch synchronised dicks.
When the boss’s daughter shows up, she realises they’re gonna need a bigger show.
Trae – Kwami Odoom
Geoff – Dex Lee
Donny – Darren Bennett
B. – Jessie Mei Li
Writer – Dave Harris
Director – Matthew Xia
Designer – ULTZ
Ciarán Cunningham – Lighting Designer
Sound Designer and Composer – Roly Botha
Choreography and Intimacy Director – Shelley Maxwell
Casting Director – Heather Basten CDG
Assistant Director – Wiebke Green
TENDER
Soho Theatre
24 April to 6 June 2026
