Dance Review: Shower Scene, Zoo Playground, Edinburgh
Shower Scene, Zoo Playground, Edinburgh * * *
She’s here, the “great unwashed”, as she describes herself and, in the middle of an elaborate piece of scaffolding, she’s about to take a shower – her first in two weeks. Chloe Mantripp’s one-woman show gives an uncompromisingly unsexy and, at times, surreal and silly insight of the life of a sex worker who, plagued by parasites and sickness, is trying to scrub away the grim memories of the repulsive men she’s slept with.
The ‘why’ and ‘how’ behind her situation are eclipsed by surreal comic sequences that stop things becoming too horrific. This is a show where talk about sleeping with “my favourite cannibal” belongs just as much as bouncing around the stage dressed as an egg. It’s an amusing yet unsettling combination, but one that provides an original and provocative perspective on the sex industry and the way women are treated within it.
Until 26 August