One half of the risqué cabaret/circus duo The Wau Wau Sisters, Adrienne Truscott takes on rape culture in her first stand-up show.
While the comedic merit of rape is her focus, Truscott effectively demonstrates that the hypocrisy, misogamy and ignorance often employed when addressing the subject is too hilarious and ridiculous to make up.
Tonight’s show is, in part, a response to American comedian Daniel Tosh’s infamous rape joke in which he allegedly responded to a female heckler with, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by five guys right now?” In a similarly provocative but wholly tongue-in-cheek manner, Truscott opens the show by asking, “Anyone here been raped? Anyone here raped anybody?” She pauses while the audience gets its bearings before exclaiming, “Fuck! Tough crowd.”
This may seem shocking enough, but throw in the fact that the woman delivering these lines is dressed only from the waist up and ankles down, and jaws are dropping all over the Seymour Centre tonight.
Truscott keeps telling us she isn’t a comedian, deliberately playing up her naïveté. Yet she navigates through topics of date rape (with a gender twist), duck vaginas (real and decoy), legitimate rape (a term coined by US Republicans for rape resulting in pregnancy) and rape whistles (and their matter-of-fact distribution to female college students in the US), all with the wit, sophistication and humanity of a pro.
The use of clever video projections and satirical striptease helps lift the mood when necessary, and although audience reactions sometimes bring the pace to a grinding halt, Truscott’s charm and intelligence guide us back to familiar territory.
A highly entertaining and completely original work, this show manages to achieve both tact and hilarity when dealing with a highly sensitive subject.
4/5 stars
Photo: Jamie Williams
Asking For It played at the Seymour Centre as part of Sydney Festival 2015.
