The traditional gift for a fifth anniversary is wood—and that’s exactly what the fifth annual Las Vegas Broadway Bares hopes to give its audience this weekend. “Because it’s traditional we wanted to play with that,” says Ryan Lyons, a performer in Le Rêve at Wynn and director of this year’s show, “but keep it cheeky.”
He means that literally, too. Broadway Bares started as a small strip show in a New York City bar and has grown through the years by giving performers a chance to show their racier side in an effort to raise awareness about the “hotness” of safe sex—and funds for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. The Vegas show has also grown in its five years. This year’s edition will be hosted by Jai Rodriguez, a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy cast member, and will include more than 100 performers from Broadway-style Strip shows, plus Cirque du Soleil performers, dancers and more. The acts for the show will revolve around the inappropriate moments during which people can get turned on. “There’s a scene at the doctor’s office and a show-and-tell number from a teacher,” Lyons adds. “It’s about the weird or awkward places where it shouldn’t happen but it does.”
Lyons and the Broadway Bares team hopes to raise $50,000 for BC/EFA for AIDS research and support with people living with HIV, making this the sexiest way to support a charity you’ll find all year.
Broadway Bares May 2, midnight, $25-$55. Planet Hollywood, 785-5882.
