OBSERVER: A Body At Work
As part of this year’s Midsumma Festival, A Body At Work had a return Melbourne season at Theatre Works and received a well-earned rapturous reception on its opening night.
A solitary woman (Frankie van Kan) tells her story of being queer while working in various roles in the sex industry for well over a decade.
Tale after tale unfolds, often hilariously, as her career moves from striptease to sex work in a brothel to being an independent sex worker offering massage with or without ‘extras’.
The script was written by van Kan herself based on her experiences working in the sex industry.
As a result, the tales told had a very authentic feel to them. Full of humorous anecdotes, witty one-liners, wry observations and reflective insights into life as a sex worker, the script switches smoothly between different moods.
Unsurprisingly, the language was rough and crude in places, but surprisingly poetic and lyrical elsewhere.
When the performer is also the playwright there is always a fear that the artist becomes self-indulgent and loses a sense of objectivity in determining what works well on a stage as opposed to what works on the page.
Happily any such fears were allayed as van Kan gave a bravura performance of A Body At Work.
With a commanding stage presence she moved easily between the play’s different styles. In addition, she effortlessly met the demanding physicality involved in replicating various striptease dance moves and erotic positions, often done either nude or semi-nude.
In less experienced hands such a potentially challenging script could have been realised in a tawdry vulgar fashion, but well-known Melbourne theatre director Maude Davey, to her credit, brought out the best in both script and performer.
What a shame then that this return season in Midsumma was so brief and it is hoped that the show might have the longer season it deserves if it ever returns to Melbourne.
- Review by Peter Murphy