It’s hard to come away from Privat­ising Parts without a renewed sense of optim­ism for our next step, you know, as humans. Tee­ter­ing at the brink of a new dysto­pi­an sin­gu­lar­ity for every day of the week – glob­al eco­nom­ic col­lapse, post-human obsol­es­cence, a flail­ing mass des­cent through Sartre’s naus­ea and out into hyper-Mater­i­al­ist nihil­ism – this unre­mit­tingly bum deal we’re call­ing the 21st Cen­tury is start­ing to look like a glob­al Texas Chain Saw Mas­sacre: Who Will Sur­vive, And What Will Be Left Of Them? But we’ve got it all back­ward, sug­gests Privat­ising Parts. The ques­tion we should be ask­ing is, What Will Be Left Of Us After We Sur­vive Each Oth­er?

Privat­ising Parts is part mani­festo, part hyper­bol­ic free-asso­ci­at­ing ramble, and part one-woman, one-hour Mad Scene. The show depicts (using the term loosely) the struggle of On the con­di­tions and pos­sib­il­it­ies of Helen Clark tak­ing me as her Young Lov­er author Richard Mer­os, as he attempts to wring mean­ing from his grief over fail­ing to win Clark’s intim­ate favour. Life, Mer­os sug­gests, is pain, and heart­break doubly so; but unlike those per­petu­ally inact­ive Buddhists, who’ve perched over that par­tic­u­lar pot for far too long without pinch­ing one off, Mer­os has a plan. And par­ti­cip­a­tion is man­dat­ory.

Mer­os, here, is played with ele­phant-in-the-room female­ness by the show’s writer, Heleyni Prat­ley; but as far as Privat­ising Parts’ con­ceits go, “woman plays man without revers­ing the gender pro­nouns” is pretty ele­ment­ary stuff. Con­cep­tu­ally Mer­os may be the tex­t’s fath­er and nom­in­al cre­at­or; but if the show has a moth­er, it’s hard to choose between Clark, Ayn Rand, and pion­eer­ing Cyborg Fem­in­ist Donna Har­away. Well, they do all have the same hair­cut?

Thus it is that Clark serves as muse for Meros/Pratley’s party-rock­ing mashup of Ran­di­an free-mar­ket pre­scrip­tion, giddy Wired-mag post-human­ism, cluck­ing Cosmo-mag advice for the lovelorn, and a gender-bend­ing, flesh-slash­ing high ten­sion that would con­found even Har­away. Or, for that mat­ter, the makers of the gender-bend­ing slash­er High Ten­sion.

There’s a lot to like in Privat­ising Parts: Mer­os exhib­its a play­ful deft­ness, a mas­tery of the reduc­tio ad absurdum, that man­ages to rope in Judge Judy, The Ter­min­at­or, talk radio, neur­o­lo­gic­al fiddle-faddle, the col­lapse of the men­tal-ration­al con­scious­ness-struc­ture, and online dat­ing sites – all without break­ing char­ac­ter. If you’re pay­ing to see a one-woman show about sexu­al­ity and cor­por­at­ism at an indie theatre where you have to clear out by 8pm so the flat­mate-com­edy can set up, odds are you already have your thoughts on, say, Ayn Rand (at least via fic­tion­al trib­ute-acts like Paul or Andrew Ryan); but the choir will find little preach­ing here, at least apart from an impas­sioned plea for vol­un­tary com­mer­cial cas­tra­tion.

Prat­ley and dir­ect­or Elean­or Bish­op visu­al­ise Mer­os’ free-asso­ci­at­ing text well, though it’s hard to ima­gine any author being quite so lib­er­al with the Caps Lock as Prat­ley’s hys­ter­ic­al vis­ion­ary would sug­gest. If in doubt, the think­ing seems to be, go large: by which token the show’s all-singing-all-dan­cing third act would appear rather riddled with doubt, the closest Pratley/Bishop come to giv­ing the game away.

Prat­ley’s show – and it cer­tainly is hers – is at its best when she’s play­ing the irra­tion­ally reas­on­able idi­ot-sav­ant, cherry-pick­ing from the Greatest Hits of Late-Cap­it­al­ist Vis­ion­eer­ing to con­coct a blue-sky night­mare of privat­ized sexu­al­ity. Don’t be the last kid on the block left tot­ing the same tired gen­it­als you were born with: buy in while you have the chance.

Privat­ising Parts by Heleyni Prat­ley from the book by Richard Mer­os, dir­ec­ted by Elean­or Bish­op, at Bats Theatre until 6 Octo­ber 2012.