I had high hopes for Whore. Described in the promo mater­i­al as “Con­tem­por­ary, top­ic­al, true-life based mono­logues told by six characters…this work is a col­lec­tion of stor­ies about street sex work­ers in Auck­land, New Zea­l­and” I thought it would be an up to date explor­a­tion of mod­ern, decrim­in­al­ised sex work. Well, I was dis­ap­poin­ted. If you played a drink­ing game where you took a sip at every cliché about sex work­ers, at every offens­ive com­ment about men, women, gay and queer people, then you could be smashed in 15 minutes. But then you’d have to sit through anoth­er 60 or so minutes before it ends, so don’t do that. *

Instead, you should go to Lash­ings of Whipped Cream which is play­ing at the same theatre after Whore. This is a 19 year old script by Fiona Samuel that treats sex work­ers and their cli­ents with respect and empathy. It’s per­formed by Rhu­barb Rouge, the altern­ate per­sona of Ricky Beirao. Although the play was writ­ten as a mono­logue for a woman, it works very well with a drag diva in the hot pants. Er, hot seat.

Mis­tress Domi­n­ique is quite sur­prised to find us in her dun­geon and in such a large num­ber. She says that she won’t have time to deal with us all so per­haps she should just talk us through her ser­vices.  There’s a little bit of squirm­ing in the seats from the audi­ence as she describes the cost and ser­vice she provides. There is equip­ment all over the stage which provides an excel­lent visu­al aid for each ser­vice. She’s also between cli­ents so takes the oppor­tun­ity to refuel her­self – after all, dom­in­a­tion is very hard work.

Ms Rouge wears a fant­ast­ic cos­tume from Mar­quis de Sade in Mel­bourne. The audi­ence gets to have a good look at it as she tot­ters up and down the steps at BATS talk­ing to us. There is some audi­ence inter­ac­tion with some saucy ques­tions. Ms Rouge is gentle (mostly…okay, sort of) with the people she inter­acts with.

Good dir­ec­tion from Geoff Pin­field and a groun­ded per­form­ance from Beirao mean that the show is funny, sassy, and worth your money.

 

*Yes, I’m exag­ger­at­ing for com­ic effect. It might take 40 minutes.