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.