’m all fur coat and no knickers. Ideally, I want my sex-life as filthy, wet and personally abusive as possible, especially when I’m on the receiving end! Honestly, who doesn’t nail their scrotum to a plank as an erotic S&M entrée? So no wonder my twisted heart – beating fast and furious on poppers in bondage shackles – thrilled at the prospect of a show called ‘Club Perverts’. Like fellow deviant aesthete Quentin Crisp – a once frequent acquaintance – I live in hope of live horrors, faux-pas and social incontinences on stage.
So, has London theatre delivered? Oh yes, darlings – in spades. Way back in the 1990s, performance artist Leigh Bowery lovingly sprayed a Brixton audience with the contents of his freshly-enema’d arse! Yes, it was involuntary, audience participation in an inescapable cloud of eau de ordure, a shit-tastic, scent sensation inexplicably never pursued by perfumiers before or since!
Meanwhile, over in Bowery’s legendary club-night Taboo, and in the blatantly illegal, Soho scum-salon the Pink Panther, semi-naked whores of every sexual configuration possible would fuck, wank and be fucked, with or without toys.
But, with the obvious lack of Bowery’s drifting poo particles enhancing the atmosphere, what, precisely, could ‘Club Perverts’ offer queens of dedicated depravity?
Initially, not much – I’d expected trainee de Sades, not grinning inmates from Lobotomy Central, and that’s just the audience! Where, oh where are the rapturously inhaled, nasal bouquets of fried pubic hair, and the lovingly-smeared, scalding chilli peppers on eager, wide-spread anuses, and better still, pouting penis-tips?
See, there’s a delicious, amoral Bible- Murder Considered as a Fine Art – that argues depravity, like every other performing art, must be judged on its aesthetic excellence. Exactly, so briefly, I forcibly gag my inner critic.
True, my first impressions are fabulously positive. Comic diva Bernadette Byrne is a torture-porn, wet-dream of half-starved, Kate Moss heroin chic, with a deadpan, faux-Dietrich drawl made for sins and innuendo.
She’s partnered by Victor/Victoria, dressed half-man, half-woman like a sideshow freak, and usually, they ravish sexual clichés more audaciously than stiletto heels up the bum.
Not tonight – all the signature, viciously precise, dental snaps at timid penises, the cutting patter and original songs droop limper than a eunuch’s Johnson.
God almighty, whose idea of a dominatrix is this? The Easter Bunny in black plastic cling-film? Surely, shared, filthy female fantasies can’t possibly be this lame? Frankly, you’d get more action doing a reverse cow-girl on a rigid corpse’s dick- no willing consent’s needed for sexy friction burns!
Still, it’s hardly Bernadette and Victoria’s fault – their venom is compromised from moment one. Tragically, having to please a herd of dopey, bovine, family heterosexuals is a performer’s nightmare– merely suggesting mass-fisting Norman Osborn would spark a riot!
However, more concerning tonight is Gypsy Wood’s pointlessly included, terminally ditzy American cheerleader, and Fez Fanana’s bog-standard, bearded drag-queen. Holy hot-frocks Jesus, please deliver us from lip-synchers substituting fuck whenever possible in ‘Get Here If You Can’, inexplicably assuming that’s peak, subversive genius!
But – and it’s a beautifully delicious but(t) – two performers rise to the occasion like shockingly sexual, surgically-thick erections. Meet jaded, American flâneur David Mills, a Scott Capurro-style super-bitch, who’s ‘done so much coke my asshole hurts – and I’m a top!’. Gorgeously violating almost unspeakable taboos, he skewers the awed reverence given differently-abled athletes: ‘Playing ball with no arms? Fine – you don’t get my bus-seat!’
Finally, Aussie Asher Treleaven reads Mills and Boon with an arrestable-on-sight, pervert’s relish deserving instant, national stardom. Obviously, on form, there’s still feisty, provocative spunk squirting non-stop from EastEnd Cabaret!
• EastEnd Cabaret @ Underbelly South Bank.
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