Lady Lust comes from the mind and mouth of Sarah Hamilton Baker, the writer and performer of this contemporary piece, in which the audience are encouraged to contemplate porn, sex, shame, 21st century feminism, Rebecca Loos, and all manner of things. There is also full nudity.
The piece was created in the REP Foundry, which is an annual programme that offers participants free professional development through the advice and counsel of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.
Hamilton Baker is as good an advert to get involved with the REP Foundry as one might imagine. Her onstage persona (if it is indeed a persona) feels at once easy and improvisational, yet calibrated perfectly for this kind of show. She is effusive but never shambolic.
She compels the audience to consider their own relationship to sex and pornography, educating them a little in the process, sharing her own experience, and all the while making them hoot, holler and occasionally snigger. There are amusing ruminations on everything sexy, from positions to insertions to nappy-night discos to “bald, muscly men.”
Parenthetically, one might note that Lady Lust is also a heavy metal song, in which the vocalist cries out, “She’s got your life / She’s got your parents, cousins, / Children, and your wife.” While not a dictum that responds directly to porn, the lyrics apply. Hamilton Baker, in a charmingly puckish bit, teases her audience about who might and might not admit to watching porn, eventually turning on the house lights and asking for a show of hands. “You could be sat next to your mum!”
There were a couple of stumbles. The mispronunciation of a certain TV presenter’s name proved a minor recurrent mistake. Also, a message about the miscellany of responses to porn would be strengthened if solo Hamilton Baker did not perform the voiceover, so that one could easily differentiate who is speaking.
Nonetheless, such blips mostly contributed to the sense that Lady Lust is Hamilton Baker’s train of thought spilled onto the stage. Lest that infer a lack of professionalism, it should be noted that the show is ably choreographed and sound-tracked. Hamilton Baker handles various props and projection screens well.
Her collaboration with a cucumber, in particular, is sordid and marvellous.
Lady Lust is the first full-length show from Hamilton Baker who befriends her audience instantly with a hilarious opening gambit. Intimacies are leapfrogged. After that, the show is basically your best mate going on at you – but in a far more ebullient, hilarious manner than that sounds. ★★★★★ Will Amott 22nd January 1015
