Speigeltent’ntavern: Only Three Nights Left!

Photo by Dave Scott

Speigeltent’ntavern, Toronto’s little slice of early-Twentieth-Century pop culture, only has three nights to go. That may not sound alarming unless you know how fast the tent fills up every night.

Head to the Harbourfront Centre for acrobats, vaudeville performers, and burlesque shows:

Thursday, June 7: 7 p.m.
Friday, June 8: 8 p.m.
Saturday, June 9: NO SHOW!
Sunday, June 10: 7 p.m.

From the journals of Rear Admiral Horatio Hammerbotham, Adventurer in Her Majesty’s Service

The following passage regarding Spiegeltent’ntavern was taken from the Rear Admiral’s journals, discovered in the possession of a thief in a Marrakesh opium den:

5 June, The Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Five and Twain

Not since my great-uncle Lord Thaddeus Hammerbotham, Royal Man of Science, created a mechanical-man composed of naught but a wax storefront-mannequin and an ape’s brain suspended in a mason-jar of men’s hair-pomade, have I seen such a pleasing sight as the gentleladies and comely house-boys of the Speigeltent’ntavern, a burlesque and circus attraction here in the City of To-ron-to, in Her Majesty’s Dominion of Canada.

Would but that I had eyes circling my head like a stone-crab or a house-fly, I would be able to take in the myriad of foreign wonders that surrounded me! Statuesque cigarette-girls strode through the night-time gas-light as it filtered through the stained-glass windows of the tavern, offering tobacco and confections. On the stage, a lovely young lass (named, I recall, Mina LaFleur — such a name!), removed garment after garment, revealing her be-tasselled bosom and a waist of a mere twenty-one inches. Later, an acrobat of the Greek Isles elicited gasps from an appreciative crowd as she suspended herself from the ceiling-beams with only a gossamer strip of silken-fabric as support. And the ale! Oh, how the ale did flow, like rivers in der Schwarzwald of the Empire of Germania!

I have taken a tramp steam-ship to the Orient and danced the Tarantella with the Queen of Siam. I have hunted the dodo and the marsupial-wolf on the veldt of Africa. I have been crowned King of the Hoboes while riding a locomotive across the plains of America. But never have I seen such a sight as this!

Speigeltent’ntavern runs nightly at the Harbourfront Centre until June 8, then again on June 10.