Review: The Dreamboys, Grand Opera House, York

The Dreamboys arrived in York to a raucous welcome from the largely female audience. That’s right; I spotted at least three men in the audience, as did the Dreamboys who included two of them in their onstage antics.

They had every outfit – robots, cowboys, military men, sailors, firefighters and even a pole dancer.

Ray was absolutely amazing on the pole, and showed an incredible amount of flexibility which carried through to many of his dances.

The Grand Opera House perhaps wasn’t the best venue for them. Those of us in the dress circle spent most of the first half of the show blinded by one of the stage lights (they did fix this for us in the interval) and a lot of the action that took place off stage in the stalls was lost to us as well.

The main core consisted of five dancers, who gyrated their hips, thrust up and down into the stage a lot and obviously stripped off down to their underwear.

Despite there being five of them there were often long gaps between dances where the stage was left empty.

Copious amounts of baby oil were used during the performances, along with at least two full bottles of baby lotion which was liberally applied to parts we can’t mention before they were put on full show.

Yes ladies – there are two additional dancers, Benedict and The Black Stallion who go the full Monty.

The remaining five show a lot of bare backsides and tease a lot, much to the disappointment of the sometimes over eager audience.

This is not a show for the faint hearted, which is good because some of these super keen audience members ended up either on stage or being fondled out of sight in the stalls.

At one point they call for four volunteers to go on stage for a ‘towel dance’ with four members of the Dreamboys.

In order to get chosen one girl decided to flash her breasts, which worked; another flashed her backside which was considered too much: she was turned down.

The dancers handled the over enthusiasm incredibly well, and very professionally, although I suspect they’re used to it on a nightly basis.

Having already watched a number of Dreamboys videos on YouTube I felt a little let down by the performance. It didn’t seem as professional or as polished as I’d anticipated from a group with their reputation.

Whilst I appreciate the dancers need to wear thick black knee pads for many of the moves it doesn’t make for sexy when combined with black underpants.

The co-ordination from the dancers was lacking a little for me; that said many of the audience didn’t seem to care as they were too busy screaming “off – off – off’.

The guys are lovely to look at, toned and chiselled with plenty of six packs on show. They’re incredibly flexible.

Sadly the performance was let down for me by the lighting, long waits, repetitive dance moves and just missed that something extra I’d been expecting.

If you want to meet the guys there’s a £10 charge for a poster which grants you access to the stage for autographs and a “quick grope” should you wish, according to their manager.

Personally I’d rather have had a programme to get signed or an opportunity to buy photos or something that could be put away in a drawer and kept.

I’ve certainly no room for a large poster and I doubt many of those that purchased them have either. But then as one girl said, she hadn’t paid a tenner for a poster, she’d paid a tenner for a grope!

I’m gutted that I couldn’t be more positive about the performance, I really am. I’ve been looking forward to this for months and even bought both mums tickets for Mother’s Day. They enjoyed it but also felt it wasn’t what they’d expected in terms of professionalism.

One audience member commented that it was more like a performance you’d expect from Britain’s Got Talent and to be honest, she said what I’d been thinking.

If I haven’t put you off then they’re on tour till the end of November, and are back in York next year on June 25th. Me? I won’t be rushing to go out and get tickets.