Reviews

Carnival Knowledge

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18 August 2010

C soco
4-30 August, 23.10

Naomi Grossman begins her self-penned, LA award-nominated solo show
about her sexploits atop a box juggling rubber penises. She starts
with “What, you’ve never juggled weenies before?” and finishes with
“Real love shouldn’t be this difficult”. That trajectory perhaps
answers her point.

To disguise the stories-from-my-life aspect of the show Grossman and
director Richard Embardo use a framing device: a circus (hence the
penis-juggling). Consequently, her performance is showy. She
face-pulls, she double-takes, she grabs her head. Some interesting
vignettes are lost in overstatement. Even fascinating stories (her
parents calling a dinner party to announce their divorce; a drunken
death-leap by her lover) have no sense of coming from her. It never
feels real – quite a shame when apparently it is.

Her patois has some appeal (reference to a “two buck chuck” and the
Mametish “clusterfuck”) but her over-reliance on puns and twee
neologisms becomes wearing, as does the oft-repeated Psycho music. It
avoids much rudery (I spotted only two vaginas, one penis and two
erections) for which she earns points. The show, though, remains
pretty flaccid.

– Benet Catty