Spiegelworld Presents "Empire" - NYTimes.com Six years ago this traveling smorgasbord of a project, named for the Belgian spiegeltent in which it lives, parked itself on a pier near the South Street Seaport, where it soon became a summer fixture. Now Spiegelworld has traveled farther north, to Midtown - more specifically, as its promotional materials proclaim, "to the heart of Broadway," setting up shop in a vacant lot on 45th Street to present a show chockablock with New York references. The name? "Empire" of course. The basic setup remains the same: once inside the mirrored, brocaded space ("tent" doesn't quite do it justice) audiences surround a diminutive stage, sitting in chairs or banquettes and making as much use as they like of the bar while being entertained by a rotating cast of characters. It's a true variety show: vaudeville meets cabaret meets circus. Some of the acts are delightful. Rigolo mesmerized Tuesday night's early crowd with an extensive balancing act. Tariku Degefa and Yonas Alemu joined forces to create something of a human top, spinning and flipping in a gorgeous display of high-stakes, nonverbal communication. They weren't error free, and their mistakes, seen at such close quarters, served to underline the danger; the distance between flirting with and catching disaster is unnervingly close here. An acrobatic trio - Anastasiia Gavrylenko, Anastasiia Permiakova and Olena Lomaga - was flawless; this too has its charms. Anne Goldman created several marvelously daffy personas, drawing one hapless audience member into an exquisitely awkward partnering routine. "I can't believe you're still smiling," she told her gracious victim near the end. He looked as if he couldn't quite believe it either. And soon enough he wasn't, when one of Ms. Goldman's male colleagues extended the skit, running roughshod over the man's obvious discomfort. Gratuitous audience abuse (never mind the skit's unexamined homophobia) is always a cheap play. Still, this "Empire" isn't half so naughty or provocative as it seems to think it is. It is, in fact, a rather milquetoast affair, one whose obvious gags, mostly recorded music and theatrical glosses soon wear thin. There's a brief eruption of male nudity, functioning as a slapstick gag, some off-color jokes and a striptease with the emphasis on tease; I found myself longing at several points for a smart, sexy artist like Julie Atlas Muz, a Spiegelworld alumna who is truly investigating and extending the burlesque traditions in which "Empire" dabbles. The show works overtime to create a freewheeling, risqué atmosphere, with nods to those good old olden days, when everything was a bit rougher and raunchier around the edges. And New Yorkers, of course, are easy targets for such nostalgia trips. This is a city full of neighborhoods that were always better just before we arrived in them, a city full of people who bemoan the safe and sanitized present having swallowed the gritty and authentic past. Hello, East Village. Hello, Times Square. But New York is also a city of reinvention, and here, "Empire," directed by Wayne Harrison, feels woefully out of its depth. Once you part its frothy curtains, there isn't very much to see.