Theatre review: Save The Lap Dance For Me, Glagow

PRUDISH Edinburgh’s relationship with its red light district is thoroughly lampooned by Morag Fullerton’s comedy. It tells the story of what happens when a well-meaning attempt to regulate the city’s lap dancing bars falls into the hands of crusading politician Elspeth Stenhouse (Lindy Whiteford).

Save The Lap Dance For Me - Oran Mor, Glagow

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Exuding self-righteousness, Stenhouse sets out on a fact-finding mission to the city’s newest burlesque club. Enter Miss Destiny Honeybaps (Hanna Stanbridge), and her sassy sidekick Lexy (Ben Clifford). Honeybaps – real name Jean Balfour – is “a lap-dancer and a feminist” who combines her on-stage career with studying for a literature degree and caring for her disabled father, confounding every one of Stenhouse’s preconceived notions.

Fullerton, a veteran writer for theatre and television, writes with flair and well-judged pace, and the cast, led by an excellent Steven McNicoll, deliver the comedy well, but a Kilmarnock sub-plot feels like a distraction.

There’s no shortage of gags, and a few more serious digs at the difference between art and pornography, but the two-faced politician and smart young lap dancer conform too easily to type. The thorny problem of how to stop the exploitation of men and women in the sex industry remains on the edge, uncomfortably unanswered.

Seen on 24.02.14

• Run ends today