Aussie Heat Male Revue Is Back, This Time at Off-Strip Rio
Aussie Heat, the male revue whose performers are Australian, is returning from hiatus with a new residency at Rio starting Oct. 8, 2026.
The show’s most recent home was Notoriety at Neonopolis downtown, where Aussie Heat performed from April 2025 until August of this year. The show closed due to international tariffs, which have affected the supply chain and resulted in declining demand for imported beefcake, a fun fact we just completely made up.
The show will move into the Riot Room at The Venue, an entertainment space we anticipate will have more churn than the annual Amish butter-making championships. All due respect to the Amish, butter and churns.
Aussie Heat first arrived in Las Vegas in July 2015 at The D, originally performing as the Aussie Hunks.
Within about a year, the production moved to the V Theater at Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood and adopted the Aussie Heat name.
In 2020, Aussie Heat moved from V Theater to Mosaic on the Strip, the former Tommy Wind Theater and, before that, Empire Ballroom. The timing was less than ideal. Aussie Heat managed a few soft-opening performances before the pandemic shut down Las Vegas entertainment, short-circuiting its planned March 2020 grand opening.
The show eventually resurfaced and most recently landed at Notoriety.
Aussie Heat is moving into a space at Rio that is also undergoing a reinvention.
The Venue at Masquerade Village was recently renovated by producer John Bentham’s Ivory Star Productions into two separate showrooms, designed for smaller productions, dinner shows, brunches, immersive events and rotating pop-ups. The current lineup includes “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding,” “Faaabulous Drag Brunch,” “Haunted Brunch” and “Punk Rock Brunch.” Because you can never have too many brunches.
The space previously hosted “Marriage Can Be Murder,” the long-running murder-mystery dinner show.
The Venue space has a long and glorious history of struggles. At one time, it was Mama Marie’s Cucina. At one point, it was Duomo, whatever that might have been. There were also a metric ass-ton of Irish pubs in and around this footprint, including Tilted Kilt, J.W.’s Tavern and McFadden’s.
Rio’s Masquerade Village is sort of a dead zone at the moment, but Rio’s owners (Kennedy Lewis Investment Management) have high hopes it can be revitalized.
On the bright side, Rio has designated a massive swath of its casino, the entirety of Masquerade Village, as non-smoking.
Rio, meanwhile, continues to build its entertainment offerings, including Penn & Teller, Comedy Cellar, “Wow, The Vegas Spectacular” (which celebrated its ninth anniversary at Rio on Oct. 7, against all odds) and “The Empire Strips Back.”
This is a circularity of the universe moment, as Chippendales was at Rio for years. Chippendales is the brand against which all other male revues are measured. Chippendales closed at Rio in 2024 after 22 years there. Chippendales is still around at Planet Hollywood. There’s also Thunder From Down Under, another Aussie-forward male revue, at Excalibur.
Performances of Aussie Heat run Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 9:00 p.m. The show is 18-plus and lasts about 90 minutes.
Tickets start at $64.99 and run up to $138.20 for the Platinum VIP experience, which includes the show, two drinks, upgraded seating, free parking (it’s Rio, everyone gets free parking) and a meet-and-greet where you can shoot your shot with the performers and enjoy the authentic Vegas thrill of being diplomatically rejected by someone with 4% body fat.
Male revues are a wild experience. You will honestly never see people having more fun. We’ve never really understood the purpose of female revues. Go to a strip club, already. But male revues give people a chance to let loose in a way that’s hard to describe. Male revues are sexy but not really sexual. They’re a place where women can get loud, lose their minds and bond with friends. To men, teasing is sort of dumb and pointless. But for women, it’s much more interesting than actual sex.
And we should say that while women are the primary audience for male revues, they aren’t the only folks who attend them. Aussie Heat makes a point of embracing the LGBTQ community.
We’re curious to see how Aussie Heat does in the hotel where Chippendales petered out.
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