Penile Origami Opens Whitehall, Sep 20

Now it's the turn of the boys. After all the acres of newsprint expended on the brief nude scene for Kathleen Turner, and now Jerry Hall, in The Graduate, the West End is now seeing a flurry of nude male activity. There are currently copious amounts of bar male flesh on display in the new Adventures of Motion Pictures dance drama, The Car Man (at the Old Vic), the new production of Julius Caesar (at the The Young Vic), and even the English National Opera's production of Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea.

But Puppetry of the Penis, written and performed by two Australian comedians, Simon Morley and David Field, is something else: the nudity is absolutely essential to the action. In a show that first became a hit at the Melbourne Comedy Festival and was seen in August at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe's Pleasance, they perform what they call 'genital origami', manipulating their genitals into a wide variety of shapes, objects and landmarks, from hamburgers and the Eiffel Tower to snails and even Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The onstage action is simultaneously projected onto videoscreens for close-up views of the objects on display.

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