Reviews

A Guide to Sexual Misery

| Off-West End |

24 April 2009

According to publicity material, Wolfgang Weinberger’s one-man exploration of sexual frustration has been seen by half a million people. Whether that was a one-off digital television appearance or 10,000 gigs in venues the size of the Leicester Square Theatre Basement (it’s current home) I don’t know. But either way he must have left an awful lot of people feeling very disappointed.

In what amounts to a kind of pared-down stand-up gig, Weinberger first divides his audience on the basis of gender, before asking them to ‘hum’ (to avoid embarrassment) their answers to a series of questions as astoundingly original as “do women prefer well-endowed men?” As the audience awkwardly hum their answers, it soon becomes clear that this rather bafflingly titled lecture provides about as much insight into the male/female psyche as a repeat episode of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps.

Despite Weinberger’s admittedly shaky credentials as a sex therapist, I wonder why he doesn’t choose to present something a little more academic. In an age in which we’re bombarded by soundbite self-help books and cheap sex-centred TV ‘documentaries’, surely there’s a market for something with a bit more psychoanalytical meat? But instead what Weinberger serves up is a rather tepid string of double-entendres and tired devices such as the post-interval questions from the audience.

A Guide to Sexual Misery fails to provide either insight or much in the way of genuine humour. Weinberger is perfectly likeable, but for a man who has played to such large audiences in the past, his rather stumbling presentational style is unforgivable. Never does he take his audience by the scruff of the neck, let alone by the balls.

– Theo Bosanquet