Off-Braodway's "Beauty and the Beast" — a critically acclaimed, adults-only affair with explicit sex and nudity — is a fairy-tale love story both onstage and off.
Chalk it up to its stars, burlesque performers and real-life husband-and-wife Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz, whose physical disparity brings a haunting resonance to the tale.
They met on a rainy May day nearly eight years ago, at Coney Island's famed "Sideshows by the Seashore." Muz, a former Miss Coney Island from Detroit, was doing one of her elaborate stripteases.
Sharing the bill was the British-born Fraser, a punk-rock drummer and male stripper with a distinctive look: Because his mother took thalidomide during pregnancy, his arms are malformed.
"I had heard of him and seen photos," says Muz, 40. "And I remember thinking, 'Wow, that guy's really good-looking.' "
Says Fraser, 52: "Her reputation had preceded her. I'd been told she's the crazy one."
It was, the couple suggests, love at first grope — in this case, "the rear naked chokehold," which he taught her ("It's your flirting technique," she jokes). He says he was hooked when he saw her perform her signature routine, in which she interacts with a severed hand.
"I chose to do that number that night because of your flipper arms," Muz says. "I did it in solidarity."
Both were married to others at the time, and it took awhile to extricate themselves. They finally wed in 2012, in the very theater in which they're now performing.
"The biggest thing was convincing my family to get it," says Muz, herself unfazed by Fraser's disability. "And they got it."
"Sometimes, when we're walking down the street and I'm wearing an outrageous outfit, I get more attention than Mat does," she continues. "But when people do stare at him, I get really defensive and I stare really hard back at them."
For Fraser's part, "I had to get used to living with a showgirl!" he says. "My previous partners were ecologists and things."
Theirs wasn't your typical wedding, to put it mildly.
"We didn't know who to invite," Muz says. "So we did an open call. Whoever knew about the wedding was invited."
The roughly three dozen bridesmaids were told to dress as zombie schoolgirls. After the couple said their vows, spectators spontaneously shouted, "One of us! One of us!" — from the 1932 horror classic "Freaks."
Not surprisingly, one of their earlier collaborations was a cabaret show titled "The Freak and the Showgirl." But "Beauty and the Beast" is their first foray into legitimate theater.
"Most of what we've done together is appropriate only for 10 p.m. and later," Muz concedes. They're thrilled to have snagged Phelim McDermott ("Shockheaded Peter") as their director and co-creator.
"When we approached him, he had just come off an, um, interesting experience with [Broadway's] 'The Addams Family,' " Fraser says. "I think we got him on the rebound, frankly."
"Beauty and the Beast" culminates with a sex scene that leaves little to the imagination.
"You couldn't show people that at the beginning of the show," Fraser says. "They'd run screaming from the theater, quite rightly. But here, it's at the end of a long journey, where people have gotten used to the characters and understand their love."
"Phelim kept giving us notes to slow down . . . be romantic, look into each other's eyes," adds Muz. "And Mat and I were, like, huh?"
"Romantic?" Fraser echoes, with a laugh. "What's that?"
"Beauty and the Beast" runs through Sunday at the Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St. Tickets, $35, at 212-352-3101 and abronsartscenter.org.
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