Rocket to the Moon

At last, a play at the National Theatre that I've actually enjoyed this year. Huzzah. Clifford Odette's play, set in New York, in the sweltering summer of 1938, in a dentist's waiting room to be precise, is a hothouse of anaesthetised emotion... trapped in a stuffy, humid, small, soulless room the atmosphere is claustrophobic, constrained, stale, uncomfortable - much like the life of dentist Ben Stark, a man pushed one way by his haranguing wife (Keeley Hawes), and pulled another by her exuberant father, with whom she is at loggerheads.It's tiring to watch, let alone experience.

Everyone is bursting with opinions and passion but Stark himself. In sweeps the beautiful Cleo Singer, a pert, zingy, smiling breath of fresh air oozing energetic, excited youthfulness. The men go crazy, the women - ach, less so. The waiting room is the perfect setting for the waiting game that subsequently unfolds - what we're waiting for is less certain... is this an office romance or something altogether bigger, grander, more interesting...? They both must escape the claustrophobia, but what's the best way? with each other? or through some kind of self revelation?

It's cleverly played out - sinewy with emotion and  beautifully acted - Jessica Raine as Cleo is all  fidgety nubile sexuality,Joseph Millson Stark all twisted, manipulated confusion, Keely Hawes as his wife, strident, pose striking, looking-down-her-nose posturing while her father is a bouncing ball of rebellion and wit. I also especially loved the rather down-on-his-luck second dentist played by Peter Sullivan (so excellent in the Donmar's the Late Middle Classes with Helen McRory last year), who brought out the tragi-comic direness of his lacklustre life with glorious brio.

A tad long, but otherwise A1.

ContainerPLUS

Last week I was invited along to the first in a series of seven deadly sins salons hosted by art collective ContainerPLUS, of whom i am a MAJOR fan. Held in their very cool offices in Shoreditch, the theme was lust, and racy talks by Coco de Mer founder Sam Roddick and historian Hallie Rubenhold (something of a historical specialist in wanton ladies) both titilated and amused, as did the aphrodisiac cocktails (pomegranite and lavender) and sexily sumptuous nibbles (incuding delicious dense brownies to die for). Before i left, i was blindfolded and led into a lust confessional booth where one of the women from saucily provocative dance troupe the Lady Greys elicited some sensual secrets from me and prescribed a deliciously fruity remedial tincture.  The next event, scheduled for mid-April has the theme of Greed...

Frankenstein

I'm not sure what happened at the National Theatre on Wednesday night. Apparently it was a stage adaptation of Frankenstein, directed by Danny Boyle, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller. I'm not so sure, more like a viciously masticated version of the brilliantly disturbing Romantic novel by Mary Shelly, a story that weaves the horrors and fears of childbirth (her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft died during Shelly's own birth, and Mary Shelly herself was pregnant when she wrote the book - she delivered the manuscript mere weeks before she gave birth) with the vibrato contemporary social paranoia relating to the advances of science and the industrial age.  I'm not sure if this production could have been any worse if it had been turned into a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The good news is, the production sold out before the run began, so unless you have tickets, you can't see it. the bad news is you almost should see it, it's THAT BAD.  what can Danny Boyle have been thinking?

Where to start? The script, probably, which was at best lamentable, at worst laughable, and not in the way intended... which leads me on to: where did the random injections of comedy come from?  i thought the story was supposed to resonate on a philosophical and tragic level. apparently not. the funny moments were utterly bizarre and not that funny. anyway, that was a minor grievance in the grand scheme of things. the script basically drew out the most basic elements of the story, and that's it. a GCSE synopsis in script form. and, actually, not even that. Absent of nuance or subtlety, it failed to tease out themes with anything more than an obvious poke. Brrr.

On stage you're thrown straight in to the meat of the plot, with the monster fighting his way free from a oval membrane and thrashing about the stage, naked, sort of moany-howling as he tries to speak and walk for the first time. i worried this period would never end. it certainly took it's time. It was gratuitous, unnecessary, overlong and overindulgent and, much as i am a super-fan of Benedict Cumberbatch, for a monster,  is a was a little, errr, un-monster like. pretty hot even, i'd say, save from a scar on his head (pretty much the only real sign he'd been assembled from the bodies of dead drunks and criminals). Which is about as far from the gigantic proportions of the monstrous beast you can get, really. scary? hell no. well scary in the sense of ordering a monster and getting a scarecrow. anyway, what really confused me is that Frankenstein (Johnny Lee Miller phoning in his performance according to Hannah and completely failing to convey any of the  character's demonic obsessiveness or conflicted agonies throughout) rather than being abjectly repulsed by his sinful, unnatural creation and rejecting him with vitriolic fury simply takes one look, says 'eeew', and scarpers. as you don't even see him create the monster, their bond is negligible. It totally undermines the entire rest of the play ie there is no real spark to ignite the monster's sense of rejection, which builds into a fury culminating in a killing spree that includes Frankenstein's brother. you have no sense of the unhappy rejection mounting to volcanically eruptive proportions at all. there is no real relationship to be rejected from. And as for the S-P-E-L-T O-U-T'  homo-eroticism... sheesh! someone stick a machete in my head, please.

Skip to the action as it unfurls in bosom of the Frankenstein clan and you have love interest Naomi Harris tearing to shreds what pathetically poor dialogue she is handed, a father who delivers lines in such a way that to compare him to wood would be to flatter him, and extras who conform to type in the most grating manner - plump maid with a west country accent, anyone?

This is the kind of theatre that makes me hate the theatre - it's over the top, 'actorly', heavy handed. sadly it's the sort of thing that people who don't go to the theatre might be tempted to book for but, having watched, will leave not just sorely disappointed, but put off booking for other things.  i wanted to shout: THIS IS NOT WHAT ALL THEATRE IS LIKE, I PROMISE.

What was, however, undeniably brilliant was the set - it was knock your socks off... steam trains power into the audience like the oppressive insistence of the industrial revolution, and scientific progress itself. The monster's shameful retreat to the countryside, where he takes refuge with a blind old man sees the appearance of a cocoon like sanctuary, a pale white Wendy house with translucent walls, it's both a metaphor for the sight of the old man and a protection from prying and hateful eyes, as it blurs and softens reality. Incidental usage of rolls of grass, showers from above and flames are all imaginatively introduced, conveying distance, variety, and changing scenery of the monster's journey with ease and speed. Very clever is the civilised beauty of the Frankenstein home which on its underside is symbolically all jutting beams, slimy walls and murky shadows, a lair where Frankenstein retreats to create a she-devil mate for the monster. The white shards of arctic ice that set the scene for the final chase between monster and creator envelop the audience - we are the landscape of the chase between monster and creator, science and civilisation... and finally the lights... above the stage are a sea of lights hanging down - domestic seeming lights clustered together through which light swims like on rippling waves. They are beautiful, magical, emotional and incredibly powerful, sweeping you along involuntarily - but which ultimately only serve to exaggerate all that's missing on stage below them.

Kinky Sex: A Sermon

So, it's a bit after the event, but my valentine's weekend was rather more filled with sex and lovers than i expected... yes, OK perhaps not literally, but what the hey, it was a riot. Friday saw me head to Battersea Power Station for a Lost Lover's Ball, which despite sounding like a woeful soft porn flick in the blurb was actually a pulsating throng of fancy-dressed and masked people buoyed by enthusiasm for partying hard. I basically went for the location, and it was amazing to be at such a lavish party inside the dilapidated ruins of such a landmark building - surreal in an industrial wonderland kind of way... Super fun on the dance floor segued into a Saturday filled with heavy remorse and self loathing, so I was fit for nothing come Sunday but a sermon condemning me to hard time in hell. or so i thought. The School of Life's Sunday sermons are a world away from trenchant religious preaching, but are filled with fire and brimstone none-the-less; evangelising comes from maverick speakers about unusual topics. This week's sermon was on Kinky Sex by Grayson Perry (watch it online here in a little while) who, dressed in a black rubber dress with exaggeratedly large breasts, the nipples of which were pierced, held forth about the glorious perversions of kink and how the truly kinky (like transvestism) is a compulsion, not a saucy foray for a Friday night by 'vanilla' couples, a compulsion that's forceful, unignorable, innate. we finished the sermon by joining in song... the 'hymn' was Venus in Furs. gloriously appropriate, i thought...

Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather

Whiplash girlchild in the dark

Comes in bells, your servant, don't forsake him
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart

Downy sins of streetlight fancies
Chase the costumes she shall wear
Ermine furs adorn the imperious
Severin, Severin awaits you there

I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears

Kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather
Shiny leather in the dark
Tongue of thongs, the belt that does await you
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart

Severin, Severin, speak so slightly
Severin, down on your bended knee
Taste the whip, in love not given lightly
Taste the whip, now plead for me

I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears

Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather
Whiplash girlchild in the dark
Severin, your servant comes in bells, please don't forsake him
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart

Apects of Love

Ok, so i thought it was about time that a pair of pneumatic, grossly inflated breasts were no longer the first thing anyone clapped eyes on when they clicked on my blog... it's time to finally post something new after AEONS.

And so to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Aspects of Love, currently showing at The Menier Chocolate Factory, on Southwark High Street. a few things we should probably clarify. i was brought up on Andrew Lloyd Webber. Starlight Express, Phantom, Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar - the lot. if you'd ever like anyone to break out into an impromptu out-of-tune rendition of Jacob and Sons (from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat), I'm your woman. Whilst other, cooler parents, were playing Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen to their sprogs, my sisters and i had Don't Cry for Me Argentina blaring out of the car stereo thanks to my mother's involvement with 'The Really Useful Group', a financial team behind ALW. Secondly, after several years of trying to deny my love of all things musical (which clearly i deemed an affliction forced upon me), i surrendered to the inevitable, and now wholeheartedly love them. Fiddler on the Roof, Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady - the whole raft. not all of them, it has to be said, but lots. most. arguably too many. Still, Aspects of Love is a corker if you ask me. It's much more operatic than a usual musical - it's definitely not made up of pizazzy show tune numbers or huge song and dance extravaganzas in the way something that Guys and Dolls is. And the story is exceptional.

Based on the novel by David Garnett, it tells the story of young and impressionable Alex, a coltish lad who, at 19, falls in love with Rose - a beautiful French actress - older, brazen, wild, ballsy, impetuous, demanding and with a taste for the theatrical - as much off stage as on. His puppyish adoration sweeps her off her feet (eventually) and they decamp to his guardian's house in Avignon where they spend a few blissful days basking in the golden, melifluous, summery rays of love. Hearing of Alex's occupation of his home, Alex's guardian leaves his lover Julietta in Venice and hotfoots it back to Avignon... and so begins a 'love quintet' that weaves between generations and propels the story forward with its sexual vigour and lusty voraciousness. Literally not more than five minutes go buy without somebody unexpectedly jumping into bed with an entirely unsuitable lover, or generally behaving in a lunatic way that can only be attributed to being driven mad by love. It's completely compelling, even more so when you know the story behind the novel/musical.

David Garnett was part of the Bloomsbury set, and as a young man was the lover of Duncan Grant. Grant later went on to have an affair with Vanessa Bell, sister of Virgina Woolf and married to Clive Bell. They had a child, Angelica, over whose cot David Garnett stood and vowed to marry her. 20 years later he did. Aspects of Love is a thinly veiled dramatisation of this history, with a few gender switches. It's nothing if not histrionic. in the best possible way. as if there was any other way.

Trevor Nunn's production at this former chocolate factory (such a cool venue, both for plays and dinner... despite permanently Saharan temperatures; every time you go it's sweltering and you see audience members pealing off layers like stars of the Burlesque stage) is truly wonderful. Despite universally terrible wigs and the chronic misjudgement of a scene-stealing dress (think of a dress that has the significance of Rebecca's dress that the new Mrs de Winter wears by mistake), which was more belly dancer than belle of the ball (totally extraordinary) - it was pacey, moving, wholeheartedly emotional - the song 'Seeing is Believing' literally made my hair stand on end. Loved the whole thing.

Set in the inter war years, the fashion was utterly glorious, and given my penchant for 1940s/50s clothes, i sat there desperately wanting to rip the clothes of Rose - fabulous 1950s dresses, plus a rather cool high waisted-turn up-trousers-and-braces look on one of the extras.

But what really made the show was the chemistry between all the leads - it crackled between each one, but was totally different depending on who was involved - playful and naughty, sensual and artistic, puppyish and devotional - there really were languages of love spoken through their bodies as well as in the songs they sang. and also the singing was superb - none of the OTT 1980s stuff; thoughtful, moving, intense - but not ridiculous. cringe factor was low, in other words. the Menier is so intimate, cosy and unflashy, it was perfect for a toned down production of what up until now has been a bells and whistles West End musical. I'm not sure it'll wholly convert a non-musical lover - but at £35, it's worth a try, I'd say. the two people who i invited (read partially dragged) - one of whom edited Angelica Garnett's most recent book, The Unspoken Truth - loved it, despite one of them jokingly (only half i suspect) threatening to walk out at half time even before curtain up.

Marc Quinn: Alannah, Buck, Catman, Chelsea, Michael, Pamela and Thomas

I felt like a complete perv wandering around Marc Quinn's latest exhibition at White Cube - must have been the giant tits, and cocks and vaginas on display. But I seemed to be rather in the minority in liking it, it has to be said. I liked the way it takes classical and religious sculptural constructs and established dialogues about the creation, beauty, sexual identity and defined sexual roles but turns them on their head - it's done in a brilliantly erudite way, so you're made to think about social, cultural and individual ideas of beauty - and how warped that can get. the transgender porn star couple (Buck and Alannah) stand moulded in silver holding hands in an Adam and Eve like pose; a pregnant man (formerly a woman) stands Virgin Mary like, cradling his stomach, his head demurely lowered, with a gentle smile on his lips; Catman's head - felinely tattooed and whiskered , rests on a plinth like a roman deity - gloriously hissing. but are these images really a warped replacement of older icons or deities? of course not, but it's an interesting thing to play around with.

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The body as canvas is a remarkable thing - moulded and shaped by it's owners (is that even what they are?) as these very sculptures have been. it's people making art out of themselves. if indeed it is art. it's difficult to say whether Quinn thinks so. the fluidity of sexual identity and the mutation of self to align the inner sexual identity with the outer. Yes, it's a freak show of sorts, but it's also a weird reflection of the times we live in, where grotesque extremes are becoming commonplace, more than commonplace - held up for our viewing pleasure.

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the only thing i hated were the massive, blow-up images of orchids, but that's because i loathe them as a flower, i think they are unbelievable naff. still, i did appreciate their technicolour relevance here - the naturalness of their bi-genderness: labial, clitoral and phallic all at once. if they can do it, why can't we?

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Marc Quinn White Cube, N1 (020 7930 5373, whitecube.com) and runs until June 26.

Sex and The City 2

Even though i enjoyed Sex and The City 2 in the main, and there were some genuine laughing, gasping and shock moments, it left me feeling a bit depressed, it has to be said. Of course it was always going to be fun to watch, but it feels a bit desperate. everything that was originally sparky and cool about each of the characters has been transmuted into caricature - played out with zero subtlety or originality. they are parodies of themselves. Neuroses, sexual voracity, ambition become cardboard cut out characters, and it grates. it's not that I'm being a kill joy - it's just genuinely annoying. It's panto, which is fine in one way i suppose, but the reason the series was so great was that it was nuanced, wryly observed. i wanted to stand up and shout - God! not all women are like this, believe me! it just felt a bit cheap, tacky, heavy handed, with some casual racism thrown in for bad measure. some bits i literally couldn't watch i was so embarrassed. it was pun-tastic - worse than a Kathy Lette novel where you fall over several puns in every sentence. some puns in this were genius. some fell so flat you could hear them smack to the floor.

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then there are the costumes. the fifth star. ludicrous doesn't cover it. it's like every scene is set up so they can have multiple costume changes and can make wow entrances a quatre. what begins as familiarly fabulous, swiftly slides in to the ridiculous. ballgowns in souks and stilettos in sand don't rock - it reeks of look-at-me desperation.

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funnily enough, the stand out one of the four leads is Miranda, whose wardrobe is the most stylishly eccentric without being garishly outre and whose character has the most fun - grabbing the holiday spirit by both hands, refraining from leering at the conveniently placed man-candy, and who evolves in a way that's surprising and rewarding.

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Obviously I'm longing to talk about the plot - but i won't spoil it by revealing anything.

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One last point - the series is called Sex and the City. The city was seriously overlooked, and missed, in this film.

The Real Thing

With love, how do you know when it's 'the real thing'? when it's not an affectation, a performance? When the people involved aren't acting a part, or secretly doing something to undermine the intimacy, or wanting to feel something so badly they almost make it true, or being willfully blind so they don't see a reality they might not like. Tom Stoppard's 1982 play skips around these issues, of performance, emotion and being genuine - it's insightful, and wry, and true, and cruel, and complex, and funny, and moving and confusing, and before you know it you're cheering the actors like billy-o as they take a bow. i think you'd have to try pretty hard to fuck up a production of this play - it's quite simply brilliant. Still, this production at The Old Vic is definitely not a fuck up - performances are pert, persuasive, buoyant, and character evolutions arc with precision and grace - from beginning to end it's completely absorbing and wittily played out.

Henry and Annie are having an adulterous affair, despite the fact that their spouses and they are all friends. After risque liaisons, they run off together. but blissfully smug love soon gives way to jealousy, confidence to insecurity, and jealousy to indifference and betrayal. A meaty segueing of emotions indeed, but such issues are turned on their head by the fact the central character, Henry (Toby Stephens channelling his smugness to perfection, yet revealing the character's flaws and insecurities with beautiful sensitivity) is a playwright, and the women he juggles actresses. You are thrown off course from the off by the opening scene - a scene from his play, about adultery, which stars characters who later appear not in his play, but in Stoppard's. with reality thrown in (that this is a play being performed), it's like a hall of mirrors with infinitely repeating images. reflections bounce around so you're never sure what is genuine, true or false. apart from the idea of sentiment, that is. conceptual notions of love, jealousy, betrayal - which become real when they are recognised. the stage is set within a giant picture frame, for god's sake - there's no sense that this is reality - just a version of it hoping to explore 'the real thing' in a way that you could ever quite perceive in life. the irony is delicious. it's great.

Women Beware Women

I love love love The Revenger's Tragedy, a Jacobean melodrama cum twisted morality play by Thomas Middleton. at one point there are 8 deaths in 7 lines and in a climactic scene the lascivious duke is made to kiss a rotten corpse, via which act he is fatally poisoned. fun. what more can you ask for on the histrionic drama front? nothing, it literally defines over the top. and the pseudo moralising element is hilarious as everyone is basically heinous and utterly despicable. even the people who think they are the good guys are proven to have the morals of a gnat and a warped, misdirected sense of integrity. The National Theatre staged The Revenger's Tragedy two years ago, with Rory Kinnear as the fabulously flawed 'hero' Vindice. It did so well, with rave reviews and a sold out run, that this year they are staging Women Beware Women, also by Middleton. In spirit, Women beware Women is deliciously similar - with a voracious appetite for treachery, lust, avarice and vice, and boy it doesn't really stray from the title message; women are rather rambunctiously shown to be adulterous, two-faced, manipulative, treacherous, slutty, mercurial, meddling whores. Still, the men don't come off much better - rapacious, proud, greedy, smug, ignorant, pompous, manipulative, hoarding, self-obsessed are some descriptions that would happily stick. It's great fun. not as fun at The Revenger's Tragedy, but certainly up there in terms of luxuriously revelling in the direst, blackest depths of human behaviour.

At the centre of the drama is Livia, stupendously brought to live by Harriet Walter. During the course of the play she pimps out her niece, Isabella, to her brother (her niece's uncle, rather than father, and who is in love with her) by telling Isabella she is not related to her uncle as her mother was basically a total slut. Isabella then embarks on an incestuous affair with her uncle, although simultaneously agreeing to get engaged to a complete simpleton with bags of money and a peculiar affection for Harlequin print socks. Odd. Livia then diverts the attentions of her neighbour in a game of chess, so the Duke can rape her neighbour's pretty new daughter-in-law, Bianca. but the new bride then abandons her husband (Leantio, a superficial loser anyway) for the duke because, basically, he's rich. Old sleaze-bag Livia then spots whining Leantio and hotly pursues him like a cougar on heat and then keeps him as her toyboy, which he moans about as he doesn't know a good thing when it slaps him in the face. The shit hits the fat at the wedding of the rapist Duke and two-timing Bianca and it's death all round in a sex/lust/bloodthirsty feeding frenzy - here emphasised by the presence of darkly ominous, spikily present vulture-like men sporting black wings. It's wild.

The first half drags a little, even though the action is incredibly pacey - arguably the men have too much talking and simply aren't as devilishly interesting as the women but the second half hots up to inferno temperatures, romps along and is hilarious. this production sees some serious over-acting, which is fine, more than fine - wonderful, actually but occasionally it's a little uncomfortable as it's not hammy enough. Bianca's trauma after being raped is a tricky one to play, i see - can there be a place for genuine emotion in such a brilliantly OTT play? but her hysteria rang neither true nor wittily over played. There's also some funny live jazz going on throughout the play. i WISHED IT WOULD STOP. the revolving stage's mash-up of macabre opulence and industrial decay worked well for me, it hammered home the two faced, doubled-edged nature of shenanigans, and some people knowing what was going on and others remaining completely in the dark.

all in all a deliciously dark romp i'd highly recommend if you have a penchant for melodrama. Beckett fans stay away. It's also part of the Travelex £10 season, which is handy.

Trash City

I think my favourite moment of Trash City, the aerial acrobatics-meets-rock concert-meets-freak-burlesque show that punched its way into public consciousness at Glastonbury in 2007 and whose current show is part of The Roundhouse's Circusfest, wasn't quite when the silver Lycra-clad tranny flew through the air singing Alice Cooper's Poison, nor even when a giant robotised bull charged into the crowd seemingly ridden by a lost Bon Jovi band member, nor when the sexy rock-chic angels fell from the sky on bungy-cords only to grab an audience member and simulate tearing their throats out - rising to the heavens again with bloodied mouths. No, it was when a near naked woman (modesty barely preserved by Matthew Barney-esque bloody cones on her breasts and a red sequined fig leaf on her bajingo), suspended from a giant cobweb-shrouded chandelier and twisting, flipping and contorting with acrobatic splendour, reached a crescendo by pulling a ruby necklace out of her pussy. amazing.

la Clique

Marawa

Ursula Martinez

Unnecessary nudity. Crude humour. Pornographic magic. Men writhing around to music like Bad Things (had to download that the moment i exited, sad loser that i am) while suspended from the ceiling in a cage. Leopard-print-catsuit clad girls hula hooping. Obviously La Clique is so up my fucking strasse it's a wonder i haven't run off to join them... my god this show is totally life-affirming, heart-racing and invigorating. it manages to be sexy, funny and fresh with virtually zero cringe factor, which you might have though was tricky when a girl's doing a magic show in the buff, pulling red hankies from her punani, or there's some guy dressed as Freddie Mercury doing a choreographed juggle to Queen songs. It should also be pointed out that this formula can go suicidally wrong, as evidenced by my experience outside Battersea Power station about a year ago, where i saw the similarly conceived Madam Zingara, which was so abysmal that i wanted to hang myself from its velveteen big top with one of the overabundant feather boas. the good thing about La Clique is there's an enormous cast, so you get completely different people performing every night. the exception that proved the rule of universal excellence the night i went was the Swedish magician/clown. but then i FUCKING HATE CLOWNS and general clowning around, so that was no shocker. apparently there's a term for it. fear of clowns: Coulrophobia.

Beware the Moon

I am currently rather taken with this wallpaper by Beware the Moon. the black holograph version i especially love. O and actually the lime green on mushroom too. i wonder how much of it i could get away with in my flat. probably not much since it is £105 a roll.

Farewell Whoopee

The Whoopee Club was one of the front runners, if not the front runner of London's neo-burlesque movement. Six years ago, when i was working at The Erotic Review, we worked a lot with its founders Lara and Tamara just as they were starting it up - collaborating on Burlesque features, promoting nights and generally thoroughly enjoying a celebration of sultry, elegantly sleazy glamour. It was underground, left field and more than a little excitingly unsettling. there hadn't really been anything like it for eons. I'll never forget the first evening of theirs that i went to - the naughty but nice titillation was wholly captivating. i never looked back and from then on any opportunity to dress up in 1940s and 50s regalia for a night of tease was snatched with both hands. Now, of course, Burlesque is everywhere, and not all of it good - i've seen enough two-bit wannabes peeling their kit off in a show of sexiness that turns me on about as much as a mosquito buzzing in the middle of the night to have become more than a little wary. a pair of nipple tassles, some suspenders and stockings, a thong and killer heels, i've come to realise, does not an erotic performance make. a serious amount of chutzpah, sass, wit and inventiveness does, which is somewhat rarer than the nearest branch of Agent Provocateur. When Whoopee started it really felt naughty. deliciously naughty. Like it was actually rather fabulously ok to be utterly entranced by girls stripping - old school style, where you were always left wishing for more. what you don't want is to feel slightly embarrassed for any performers - wishing instead that they'd save their dignity and just stop. It's a state that's all to easily achieved, sadly. Anyway, Friday saw The Whoopee Club's last ever show - a night of war time austerity at The Bethnal Green Working Men's club. I was keen to go, for old time's sake. There were some brilliant performances - i especially loved the pole dancer grinding to Peaches' The Boys Wanna Be Her (especially good as i do so love Peaches - esp Lovertits), the spandex bodystockinged girl hula hooping and Audacity Chutzpah's hilarious feminist striptease.  Less keen on the maniac tranny flinging himself around the stage and staplegunning things to his chest, but that's personal preference i guess. Paloma Faith wore gold sequins and sang, and everyone was red lipsticked and seamed tights-ed. Bliss - a glorious memory of the good old days. 

Bad Sex

My most favourite bookish party of the year was on Monday; Bad Sex, thrown by The Literary Review at the In and Out Club on St James Square. I started going when i used to work at The Erotic Review, and now go (well, gatecrash) every year. it's such fun. anyway, the prize is supposed to be for a bad sex scene (a sex scene written badly as oppose to a scene about terrible sex) that has been needlessly inserted into a good book, and this year's winner was the above - Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones. And indeed, the excerpt that was read out was indeed rather odd... (though not the worst of the selection if you ask me: see Amos Oz's Rhyming Life and Death).

"Her vulva was opposite my face. The small lips protruded slightly from the pale, domed flesh. This sex was watching at me, spying on me, like a Gorgon's head, like a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks. Little by little this silent gaze penetrated me to the marrow. My breath sped up and I stretched out my hand to hide it: I no longer saw it, but it still saw me and stripped me bare (whereas I was already naked). If only I could still get hard, I thought, I could use my prick like a stake hardened in the fire, and blind this Polyphemus who made me Nobody. But my cock remained inert, I seemed turned to stone. I stretched out my arm and buried my middle finger into this boundless eye. The hips moved slightly, but that was all. Far from piercing it, I had on the contrary opened it wide, freeing the gaze of the eye still hiding behind it. Then I had an idea: I took out my finger and, dragging myself forward on my forearms, I pushed my forehead against this vulva, pressing my scar against the hole. Now I was the one looking inside, searching the depths of this body with my radiant third eye, as her own single eye irradiated me and we blinded each other mutually: without moving, I came in an immense splash of white light, as she cried out: 'What are you doing, what are you doing?' and I laughed out loud, sperm still gushing in huge spurts from my penis, jubilant, I bit deep into her vulva to swallow it whole, and my eyes finally opened, cleared, and saw everything."

Charles Dance presented the award. He is HOT. i have had a major crush on him for years and it went stratospheric.

Kienholtz: The Hoerengracht

Super sleazy it is, wandering through this recreation of Amsterdam's Red Light District at The National Gallery... especially as i was completely on my own and so totally felt like a pervy voyeur (a role i relish naturellement, but none the less a bit weird in such a grand location). Prostitutes stare blankly out from drab cardboard-box-sized, window-fronted rooms, red light soaking them like a bloody crime scene, and looking like about as up for it as a pavement, their faces framed by glass cases - involuntarily making a literal exhibition of themselves. It's a funny piece, not least because of its most unlikely setting, but also because of its discourse on prostitution... which is a confusing one... it's neither a repellent nor exciting presentation of sex for sale, but rather a depressing and sad depiction of a 'profession' that's as old as the hills. an exhibition that's definitely worth seeing though.

Kienholtz: The Hoerengracht, on at The National Gallery until Feb 21.