Fashion Freak Show review round-up – Jean Paul Gaultier’s show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall ★★★★

"A fabulous fiesta of fabric and flesh"

"Lucha libre masks, conical bras, banana skirts – this voguing, strutting, dancing celebration of the fashion designer’s life and influences is a lot of fun"

"Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show may be all about clothes, but there’s as much flesh as there is fabric here; it’s as much a celebration of bodies and sensuality and sexual freedom as it is a fabulously fun romp through the French designer’s life and career."

"Jean Paul Gaultier’s life story is fabulously tongue-in-cheek"

"Landing in London after a run at the Folies Bergère in Paris, this slick, bouncy and extravagant production is an ideal summertime confection. It is also the realisation of a childhood dream on the part of its creator, Jean Paul Gaultier. The French fashion designer and his co-director, Tonie Marshall, have styled the show as a self-glorifying celebration — and more than a bit of a send-up — of a remarkable career. Shaped by them and the choreographer Marion Motin into a quick trot through Gaultier’s life and times, and featuring an engaging, 18-strong ensemble of dancers, singers and actors, it lavishes attention on career highs without neglecting personal loss."

"Funny, pacy, sexy and fabulously French"

"There is no way anyone can leave without thinking that we are all beautiful"

"The soundtrack pulls us through punk into disco before spinning us gently into Jimmy Somerville’s falsetto tones as the spectre of AIDS takes hold. Gaultier lost his grand amour Francis Menuge to the disease, and a searingly beautiful dance sequence reminds us all of the time when so many gay men were dying cruelly young."

"Jean Paul Gaultier’s autobiographical cabaret is wobbly in places but looks stunning"

"As a piece of catwalk spectacle, it’s a roaring success. As a cabaret, less so. Typically in cabaret, the costumes are the weakest element of the show. If you’ve got an eye for that sort of thing, it’s not uncommon to clock crooked seams and loose sequins as a singer belts her soul out, or as an aerialist hangs in midair."

"Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show dazzles in London"

"We had a really fun night out with Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show. It’s not the most thought-provoking of shows and there’s very little substance, but it all looks and sounds wonderful, and it has an amusing and subversive sense of humour. A few visual elements may be lost on a British audience, but the jokes poked at Karl Lagerfeld’s expense, or the references to the Eurotrash show Gaultier co-hosted, will play well to the London crowd. Those looking for a healthy dose of high camp fun will find that this certainly ticks all the right boxes."