Erotic, funny and unflinching: The stellar show that lifts the veil on sex work

THEATRE | MIDSUMMA
A Body at Work ★★★★★
Frankie van Kan, Theatre Works, until February 1

Theatre and sex work have a long and complicated history.

Shakespeare helped “whore” to survive by using it 99 times, despite the stigma attached to the word in his day, while his Japanese contemporary Izumo no Okuni founded kabuki using an all-female troupe of lower-class women playing male and female roles, only to have women forbidden from performing after her retirement due to concerns over – you guessed it – prostitution and the corruption of morals.

Frankie van Kan’s A Body at Work is outspoken, erotic, funny and unflinching.Credit: Darren Gill

Even the neutral term “sex work” is owed partly to theatre. It was coined by feminist, sex workers’ rights and HIV/AIDS activist Carol Leigh, who popularised “sex worker” in her 1984 one-woman play The Adventures of Scarlot Harlot.

The magnificent Frankie van Kan follows in Leigh’s footsteps. A Body at Work is outspoken, erotic, funny and unflinching in drawing the personal into the political as it probes entrenched whorephobia (including the performer’s own) and bares all in a wide-ranging and reflective solo show based on her experience as a sex worker.

Van Kan might describe her pussy as “large and in charge”, but so’s her brain. The clever and seductive script follows her career – its evolution from stripping to erotic massage and selling sex for money and how she felt about it – alongside her personal life as a queer woman and mother.

Spellbinding striptease and erotic dance, empowering burlesque on a par with Ursula Martinez, and priceless sex comedy are never far away. It’s a show that takes the audience, with a conspiratorial wink, behind the veil to expose what it’s really like in strip clubs and brothels. All your burning questions will be answered.

A Body at Work is a show that takes the audience, with a conspiratorial wink, behind the veil.Credit: Darren Gill

What is this queer sex worker thinking about when providing services to male clients? (Fabulous!) Are the assumed power dynamics of sex work as clear-cut as wowsers, or some feminist activists, believe? (Not at all. Van Kan is dominant in the onstage partnership with Daniel Newell – who plays all other roles – and her observations of male entitlement and vulnerability are nuanced, even if they sometimes spurt into orgasmic hilarity.)

Brilliantly directed by Maude Davey, the queer entertainment factor is high, without overwhelming the urgency of the impulse to derive ethics from experience rather than preconception.

As George Bernard Shaw noted in Mrs Warren’s Profession, art’s effectiveness as an instrument of moral propaganda is rivalled only by personal conduct, itself outdone by “the art of the stage, because it works by exhibiting examples of personal conduct made intelligible and moving to crowds of unobservant, unreflecting people to whom real life means nothing”.

You’ll cop an eyeful and a mindful at A Body At Work. Demystifying sex work through experience distilled into art, it dispels changing, but still ingrained, prejudice and misconception to help us see real life more clearly.

Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
An Evening With Gillian Welch & David Rawlings ★★★★★
Hamer Hall, until February 2

Auspiciously for the first night of a five-night residency, it seems every celebrated musician in Melbourne has turned up to see Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.

David Rawlings and Gillian Welch perform at Arts Centre Melbourne, January 28, 2025.Credit: Richard Clifford

The duo takes to a stage stripped back except for mics and a native floral arrangement. Just acoustic guitars, a little double bass, some harmonica, banjo and a miraculous convergence of two of the most interesting artists on the planet.

They start with the gentle melancholy of Elvis Presley Blues, before moving into the up-tempo bluesy folk of Rawlings’ Midnight Train, which sets up Empty Trainload of Sky, the album opener of their new record Woodland. A neat showcase of the duo’s beguiling, haunting voices and humble, folksy charm.

Welch pulls out the banjo with a sheepish grin and quips: “We’re almost out of tricks to show you… maybe Dave will take his jacket off later.” Rawlings did take his jacket off, an hour and a bit later, provoking hoots and hollers, but they had plenty of tricks left to show us.

Welch and Rawlings have been writing and singing together since the early ’90s, and they play as though they are one mind moving through two guitars.

Welch and Rawlings have been writing and singing together since the early ’90s.Credit: Richard Clifford

There were times, such as on the wild bluegrass-inflected Red Clay Halo, when Rawlings’ playing seemed to get away from him, absorbed in a solo and swaying wildly over his guitar, but then with a smile from Welch he came back and they dropped into perfect harmony for the chorus, no beats missed.

Harmony doesn’t seem a strong enough word for the combined effect of their voices. They are almost one entity – Rawlings’ voice strains at his upper register trying to meet Welch’s tone, but seems to soar when it gets there, elevated by her voice, lifting the broken-backed melancholy of the lyric to something sublime.

The sense of trust and intimacy between them radiates out to the audience. It feels, for want of a better word, glorious to witness two musicians whose love of performing invites us in to share the full range of feeling they can conjure.

You feel it in the playful sorrow of Back in Time, in the elegiac beauty of Look at Miss Ohio, and the fatalism of Revelator.

But also, in the generosity and joy that saw them come out for three encores – including covers of gospel workhorse I’ll Fly Away and a nod to Cash and Carter with Jackson and a touch of church house glory to send us out glowing into night.

Reviewed by Liam Pieper

CIRCUS CABARET | MIDSUMMA
Tender ★★★★★
Cirque X, Gasworks Arts Park, until February 8

Word nerds might know that ‘tender’ is a contronym – a word with two opposite meanings. It can describe attentions which are gentle and affectionate, or it may refer to being sore from … rougher physical activities. This all-queer circus cabaret flirts with the ambiguity in an intimate spectacle fusing acrobatics, song and the playful eroticism of physical theatre.

Cirque X might be a new company, but it’s bound for glory.Credit: Cain Cooper

Led by companies such as Brisbane’s Circa, circus has spread its wings in the 21st century to claim a more dramatic ambit. It isn’t just eye candy any more. Choreography and theatrical performance and design skills have been added to the arsenal – elite circus artists are expected to be able to dance and act nowadays, in addition to performing feats of jaw-dropping athleticism and grace.

The six-strong ensemble in Tender embodies the triple threat with effortless charisma. Beyond the incredible physiques and prowess of these young performers, one of the things I loved most about it – and this should appeal to the rainbow tribe generally, I imagine – is the way the trust involved in circus becomes an emotional touchstone for the solidarity of queer subcultures.

Sometimes it is unspoken and ephemeral, as in the opening acrobatic sequence performed by Chris Barnett and Mitch Wnek. This lithe and perfectly synchronised dance of desire toys with and transcends a hollow cube, queer bodies unconfined by boxes and categories, attuned to a unique syzygy.

There’s a similar quality to the aerial pas de deux between Missy and J Twist on static trapeze, their connection aloft deepening in a moment of earthbound affection.

Other times it’s worn with extroverted pride – Kenn’s flowing locks whip the air in an ecstatic dance of self-love and burlesque-like seduction; Penelope’s power vocals run from club favourites to the Divinyls classic Pleasure and Pain, and they’re as resplendent as the diva’s exuberant costumes.
(The costume design is terrific across the board – raunchy, elegant, with a splash of kink and a mischievous wink at the dull confines of the gender binary.)

Fans of gravity-defying acrobatics won’t be disappointed.Credit: annekeja

More decadent pleasures and sensual fascinations await. One hedonistic tableau vivant drops us into the world of fetish, before unleashing an uncannily flexible pole routine performed in platform stilettos with a ball gag.

Fans of gravity-defying acrobatics won’t be disappointed. Acts on aerial hoop and tissu are among the most striking and expressive I’ve seen, although the ensemble floorwork and choreography is just as uplifting.

Cirque X might be a new company, but it’s bound for glory and this circus-cabaret is as imaginative, thrilling and theatrically accomplished as the best we produce. See it before the world catches on and ticket prices rise.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

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