Are there any taboos left? Apparently so, if the reception for this monologue written by an anonymous woman but read aloud by a man is any indication.
The gentle tirade consists of a series of anecdotes of inappropriate crushes, dangerous liaisons, and an awful lot of self-pleasure. While there are some proper jokes there aren’t any belly laughs here.
Instead, the piece thrives off the idea of sexual guilt: that our social mores still mean that talking openly about fantasy and sexual experience, especially that of a woman, elicits a nervous giggle. And the mainly female audience giggled a lot.
Tim FitzHigham was the male reader at Wednesday’s show, encountering the words for the first time as he delivered them. He overegged the eye-rolling and corpsing, but then this is a piece driven by reactions.
Whether those reactions are genuine shocked innocence, or just playground sniggering, depends on your point of view.
