Comedy
by Tessa Waters
Circus Theatre
3 Feb 2015
Review by Kate Prendergast
“I take heaven into my body and it comes out in your face! In your face! In ALL YOUR FACES!”
Bounding about the Big Top in sequinned bodice and black tights, Tessa Waters shrieks with joy and mimes blasting ‘Art’ out of her tits and vagina. So, yes: Art is basically an abstracted sublimation of celestial come.
With this metaphor I take no issue.
A caveat though, before I go on: I must admit myself to be far from the ideal audience member this show hopes to target. A manic and cynic by turns, and sporting a form that finds analogy with Perth’s topography, any kind of challenge-laden message to “let yourself go”, “embrace yourself as you”, “love yourself honey, you’re beautiful” just sets off in me a perverse chain reaction towards a heavy and hopeless kind of grim. For me then, at times the affirmation-emblazoned stage act felt a little like a vajazzling group therapy class with sequins and mandatory crumping.
Yet from the generous cheering and clapping (and the entertainingly agog expressions of some), much of the audience (of which was made up of equal parts men and women) seemed to be having a feel-good ball of a time. Through dance and open-invite crotch-petting, spectators were encouraged to embrace their body; its lines and its movements, sharing in the triumphal cheek of the wild glam-booty-bam powerhouse woman’s woman before them.
“I love this. I love all of this,” she gushed, giggling dopily and fondling her divinely curvaceous self with unabashed pleasure.
It is certainly impossible not to be drawn in by Waters’ appeal. Vivacious, sweet, cute-girl-clownish and dangerous in turns, she’s like the messy diva love-child of Cher and Tim Curry. With supreme self-assurance, she gate-crashes the typically masculine arena of comedy, challenging its erogenous zone monopoly and bumping her ass mock-angrily against its central penis-pillar.
Her dance numbers to ‘Foxy Lady’ and ‘The Barber of Seville’ are bold, goofy and sexy, and she set the audience a-hooting when letting a plain-clothed woman touch her Valkyrie-armored mega-boob. To which, of course, she opera-orgasmed.
Glamorous, bawdy, and wholesomely naughty, this buxom sugar-pop warrior will probably make select future audiences sing too.
WOMANz will be performing until the 9th of February. Tickets are here, via the Fringe World guide.
