Shake your tail feathers

A fine-feathered song and dance review, Las Vegas Fantasy has come to Taiwan and, despite the fact that no one under 18 years of age can gain entry due to the amount of flesh that's revealed, there's been a surprising lack of controversy surrounding the show's opening dates in Tainan and Kaohsiung.

Surprising, because most any time someone takes their clothes off on stage in Taiwan, there are television cameras lurking in the shadows ready to record the event, then rush it back to the news room where all the offending parts are blurred out. Then the item is aired endlessly as the day's hottest "news."

Readers may remember Sun Son Theatre's (身聲演繹社) production of Circle of Love last October, in which several actors removed their already diminutive costumes and made "suggestive movements" together on stage. Police showed up on two consecutive nights to videotape the play. They suspected Sun Son of "offending society's morals and decency," despite the fact that the show was subsidized by the Taipei Cultural Affairs Bureau.

Three months earlier, the Australian boys, Thunder from Down Under had stormed into town snapping their g-strings, but they were left to do so without any interruption.

The lesson of Thunder from Down Under and Vegas Fantasy, it would seem, is that such behavior is simply expected of foreigners.

For your information:

The revue is tonight at 7:30, tomorrow at

11:45pm, Sunday at 2:30pm and 7:30pm; and every night next week, Monday through Friday, at 7:30pm, at the Taipei Convention Center. Call ACER Ticketing on (02)2391 1295. Tickets range from NT$600 to NT$3,600. The production returns south next weekend, March 27 and 28, for engagements at Taichung's Chungshan Hall.