The one thing burlesque is not is serious.

But tassels, props and boned underwear in so many layers you wonder how the poor girls manage to move at all has left the art of the strip tease more of a perfectly executed mission than a flight of fancy.

Luckily Sinner Saint Burlesque – the Seattle troupe currently on a stint at the East End’s trendy Brickhouse – have held onto the spirit of it all.

These girls are fun, fun, fun and pretty funny in parts too.

Theirs is a show of alternative burlesque, not all whimsical expressions, fluttering eyelashes and feather flapping.

Each of the performers has their own quirky persona, delivered in short, sharp acts which give the show a punchy feel.

I never expected to see one of the acts dressed up as a tramp (the beer out of a bag sort rather than the type you might instinctively think of with this genre) coming out of a booze-fuelled slumber, only to start peeling away the layers of dirt-infused tweed.

Jesse Belle-Jones, known in the show as the ‘sexual intellectual’, clearly had a ballet background and mixed it all up with some rather dexterous moves.

It was nice, also, to see tributes to the original stars of burlesque.

Lady Tatas’s performances, wonderfully kitsch, took inspiration from the stage sirens of the 1940s and 50s.

She also managed to make perching fake tropical fruit on your head while energetically prancing around the stage look fairly simple.

The performers here are not polished down to a tea or the most lithe, impossibly supple women you’ll ever come across.

But they infuse a silliness into burlesque that many acts are leaving at the front door.

The show is held together by comedienne Nicole Lucas whose self-deprecating and daring humour gets more bold as the evening goes on.

The Brickhouse does a great dinner and entertainment offer at �35 a head for three courses and a decent view.

Go to thebrickhouse.co.uk