Scene and Heard: Gorelesque Idol

A gold disco ball rotates slowly from the ceiling, turning the floor into a geometric whirlpool. Older couples fill the tables along the balconies and the stage, and twenty-somethings mill around the back of the room. A man with a small wooden chair on his head rests next to me at the bar. At 8:00p.m., the lights dim, and the jazz band onstage is replaced by a woman in a black mermaid dress. “You all excited for the show?” she booms. “Nothin’ like some naked ladies on a Tuesday night!” The elderly couples clap politely. The twentysomethings hoot. Gorelesque is about to begin.

The show is exactly what it sounds like: a horror-themed, blood-filled burlesque. Similar shows take place across the country, each one running only for a single night. This particular production is held in the Oberon, the fabulous, often glitter-filled little theater on Mass. Ave, but it’s attracted performers from all over the area.

The woman in the mermaid dress turns out to be Danielle Hect, host for the evening. Hect explains that while Gorelesque Idol is meant to be a “safe space,” it’s also a competition. She gestures to the panel of judges sitting in the VIP section. The judges will make comments after each dance, and the audience will vote on a favorite. That dancer will travel to NYC to take a spot in the national competition.

The audience is tolerant but restless as Hect explains the rules for the evening, and when the first dancer shimmies onstage, they release their pent-up anticipation in a thunderous round of applause.

The dancer, a “burn victim,” is wrapped head to toe in bloody bandages. She struts around to Halloween-themed music, unpeeling layers of gauze one at a time, until she’s standing in front of the audience in only a few artfully placed strips of fabric. Both entertaining and appalling, she seductively peels back a strip on her thigh to show us a gaping wound. She flips the blackened bandage back and forth a few times, does a few more rounds of the stage, and slinks off.

The judges love it. “I never knew scabs could be sexy,” says one. The rest quickly assent, then turn their eyes expectantly back to Hect and the rest of the dancers. They know no one’s here for the commentary.

The performances that follow are equally grim—the slow unpeeling of a woman’s skin, a two-person marionette act involving an eerily boneless doll-woman, and a sequin-covered homage to “The Blair Witch Project.” A Nightmare-Before-Christmas-esque boogeyman in head-to-toe burlap and an enormous reptilian headpiece stalk around the room; a ghoulish clown strips down to a housedress; a cannibal woman brandishes a head on a stake.

Intermission gives me the chance to catch my breath. A woman dressed as some kind of Old West saloon girl hands me a voter card, and I lean against the wall to watch the audience recover and mingle.

I must have missed the memo about dressing up because some members of the audience are wearing costumes nearly as elaborate as the dancers’. In fact, when the performers come out and start chatting with the public, they fit right in. Introductions are made. Jokes are told. Maybe it’s all the camp and glitter, but this crowd seems much more natural than the average group of strangers. I spot the guy wearing the chair again just as someone else approaches him. “I should buy you a drink,” says the stranger. “You’ve got a friggin’ chair on your head.”

Chair Guy shrugs. “I can’t help it. I was born this way.”

The second half of the night passes at lightning speed. There are performances by the host, the judges, and a crew of girls in matching black lace. There is an audience member costume contest (Chair Guy is upstaged by a skeleton with platform sneakers and killer dance moves). There’s a bit of banter, a lot of acknowledgements, and, finally, the results.

Hect calls all the dancers to the stage and hands them each a pink carnation as they line up along the thick velvet backdrop. The judges stand behind her and hand her a stack of cue cards. She delivers the standard line about closeness of votes and difficulty of decisions, the tech team starts a drum roll, and Hect announces that the winner is “Devore Darling!”

The marionette girl steps forward and the crowd cheers, but the judges look horrified. They pull Hect to the side, whisper, and push her back to the front. Face pale, Hect quiets the audience and announces that the winner is actually Femme Bones, Cannibal Woman. Bones bites the head off her carnation.

As the audience trickles outside, they seem taken aback by the biting October chill. Over the last few hours, the interior of the dark little building has become a pocket of warmth. In fact, laced with the aromatic combination of an open bar, a heavily perfumed crowd, and more than a dozen enthusiastic dancers, the air had become nearly thick enough to feel against your skin. Walking into the Oberon a few hours ago may have been a shock, but reentering the real world is now a bigger one.