Burlesquing acrobatics photo: James Julius The Wau Wau Sisters Ars Nova 511 West 54th Street 212.868.4444 more theater most popular most commented The Unconquered by Alexis Soloski Rafta, Rafta . . . by Alexis Soloski Rattlestick Playwrights Theater by Michael Feingold Unsettled Sightlines by Michelle Orange John Turturro's Does Beckett Hamm I Am by Alexis Soloski Girls Love Gay Male Porn Pucker Up by Tristan Taormino My Boyfriend's Kink Is Getting Fat. What Do I Do? Savage Love by Dan Savage Sex and the City Spoilers: A Sneak Preview of What Really Happens to Carrie and the Girls by Lynn Yaeger Our Favorite Writers Pick Their Favorite Obscure Books Summer Guide by ALEXANDER NAZARYAN The Barely Legal Empire of Tony Alamo by Maria Luisa Tucker NYPD Inaction Over a Missing Black Woman Found Dead Sparks a Historic Racial-Bias Lawsuit (9) Sean Gardiner Devo-Inspired Art in East Williamsburg (8) Maro The Barely Legal Empire of Tony Alamo (5) Maria Luisa Tucker David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' (4) David Mamet Runnin' Scared: Deep South of Houston: Is a Soul-Food Restaurant Too Black for Soho? (4) Runnin' Scared: Chloe A. Hilliard

In the first number, for example, Adrienne Truscott (the blonde) and Tanya Gagné (the brunette) skip onto the stage attired in Catholic schoolgirl uniforms. As the immortal strains of Night Ranger's "Sister Christian" play, the ladies perform gymnastics, simulate sex acts, and disrobe down to brassieres, briefs, and kneesocks. Then Gagné, smiling wickedly, crucifies Truscott, hammering the nails with the heel of a discarded mary jane. The audience, fizzy with "Wau Wau–tinis" (pink champagne and a maraschino cherry) and complimentary lollipops, lavishly applauds.

Even such unbuttoned impishness might pall after a while—the siblings have typically limited themselves to 20-minute nightclub sets—but the Wau Waus and director Trip Cullman have the good sense to keep the evening short, the costumes shorter, and the variety acts varied. It's Weimar cabaret meets sapphic slumber party. Nor do they worry their pretty little heads about coherence or meaning. A Dalí-esque dance, labeled "the artistic segment of the show," features the women clad as rainstorms, or perhaps jellyfish. It segues into a guitar-strummed diptych that includes the sacrilegious ditty "Jesus Is Coming." An uncouth shower scene—during which a glitter-topped tampon landed in the lap of The New York Sun's drama critic—leads into a trapeze routine.

It may be that aerial act that sets the Wau Waus apart from many of their neo-vaudevillian peers. Sure, they've got the ironic and the naughty down pat (twin panties inscribed, "fuck" and "yeah," tanks reading, "I love t&a"), but they have the athletic chops to match. As they swing and fling themselves over and around each other, the lurid chat and the Lurex dresses seem so much lagniappe—just another maraschino cherry crowding the champagne.