From Sup to Dawn

An extended First Look at a real-life supper club in the Greater Northeast.

by A.D. Amorosi



Dancing Queen: One of Kleopatra’s own. photo: Scott Weiner

In Susan Waggoner’s Nightclub Nights: Art, Legend, and Style 1920-1960 (Rizzoli), a glorious yesterday of opulent hot spots is in full fragrant display. Painstakingly detailed down to the cornices, Waggoner’s worldly guide reveals the garish golgotha of complexly coursed meal-after-meals, served with hints of foreign intrigue on golden trays in gilded, heavy, velvety-curtained rooms to beautiful babes and dapper dudes.

Cotton Club. Tropicana. Florentine Gardens. Stork Club. Coconut Grove. These supper clubs had more than just fine fillets in sauces as heavy as the drapes. These spaces had the most exquisitely vivid floor shows starring hundreds of sexy, scantily clad, bejeweled dancers with thousands of bare legs. In between lavishly costumed dance numbers, there was an international array of singers crooning woozily to big-band hits of the day so that the touch-dancing audience could create its own romantic display. Night would turn to day as each of these premier supper clubs went regularly till dawn.

Today, these places simply do not exist. You may have bars where bands play, but no fine food. And certainly no true interactive dancing. You may have a lovely room and great food, but the entertainment entrées leave you hungry, and the communal tables rarely adhere to communion. And you can’t smoke. You may have nights that occasionally go till dawn, but the Ecstasy makes your back hurt. And nobody looks good wandering around a parking lot on E.

Actually, one real-life supper club does exist. But not in Center City, for a true supper club of this magnitude would twice out-price Tangerine or Glöbar. Rather, these all-night supper clubs with floral floorshows are a part of Northeast Philly’s Russian community. Pass the mini-malls and long lawns way up Bustleton Avenue and you’ll find perhaps this town’s most unique entity, a campy-but-dedicated Russian supper club named Kleopatra.

"You’ll eat, and then you’ll see a show bigger than Las Vegas," promises owner Art Star of his months-old international port that used to be a Japanese restaurant. "Americans love this place. Where else can you see a show, hear this music, dance and eat till 7 a.m.?" Nowhere. And that’s what makes Kleopatra a wonderfully wack dream locale. And you can smoke cigs while eating till your teeth clench.

Located in a strip mall by a Super Fresh along the 15000 block of Bustleton, Kleopatra does not automatically give away its allure, despite a crowd of Russian émigrés and the thump of a Russian-disco take on "Just an Illusion" by Imagination. Until you part the sheer tangerine curtains and blue velvet drapes, that is.

Once in the lobby, you’re confronted by the exuberance of purple-tunic-ed waiters and golden idols. There’s a Michelangelo-esque fresco medallion on the ceiling held aloft by Egypt’s finest warriors.

Within minutes your ears get used to the sound of a crack team of synthesizer players, saxophonists and singers covering everything from Russian song, traditional and current, to an odd selection of Western pop hits: "Stranger in My House," "She Bangs," "I Will Survive," some Mel C, some Michael Zager. "Go Aruba," one singer in two-tone sunglasses yells. This Russian audience of all ages knows the lyrics to all the songs — whether it’s the dressy gent in a mullet ballroom-spinning or the lovely lady hot-dogging her way through a hundred stagey Toni Basil moves, nearly tearing her tight pink dress in the process. This crowd is a wonderful floor show all on its own. The tunes are sung with great emotion as the unit (unnamed except as the Kleopatra house band), play in front of a Radio Shack rainbow-swirl light. While this is going on, a young, vibrant Russian dancing girl busts more Fly Girl moves and costume changes than old school J.Lo.

Upon peering into the surprisingly affordable splendor-splattered menu — Dutch herring fillets marinated in sherry and dill, boiled veal heart and duck tongue, French onion omelet, succulent lamb kabobs, snails in onion sauce — your appetite takes over. Eating commences. A strolling digital photographer will take your picture while you’re reveling and give you an 8-by-10 glossy before you can finish your fresh pineapple slices and pastries.

Before you can stop your head from spinning from the sugar-and-vodka rush, the lights go black. Then strobe lights appear and dry-ice smoke-bubbles open the dancefloor to a handful of dancers, male and female: the Ballet Kleopatra, as Star calls it. They are decked out in a series of expensive outfits: Day-Glo maribou feathers (with matching headresses) from cuff to ankle.

One number, done in black light, features these barely dressed beauties hovering under a white sheet until the shiny material becomes a slivery blanket under which these writhing sacrificial lambs get all ritualistic. In between these snake dances, the house band sings dynamic Russian songs that send seated lovers into swoons.

Then the lights go up, and it happens all over again till 7 a.m. This is the true stuff of classic dinner-theater lore. But if you want to take part, act fast. Kleopatra’s Saturdays are booked through December.

Owner Star, modest but shrewd, keeps the names of his staff a secret, telling me his choreographers are fresh out of Manhattan and that he’ll change the choreography and costumes every few months. He’s right to be cool and cagey. With Center City restaubars and clubs aching to maintain uniqueness, Star’s kitschy Kleopatra, with its variety show environment, is doing it every week.

Kleopatra, 15005 Bustleton Ave., 215-673-3800.