JANE AUSTEN’S GUIDE TO PORNOGRAPHY & GORGEOUS BASTARD!
Brett is a 21st century pornographer who is suffering writer’s block. Jane Austen is slowly dying and wants her last novel to send shockwaves across the moors. They find in each other a muse, the kind that can only be found in absinthe or in the fantasy world of theatre. Brett, the arrogant writer plays his hesitance well, thrashing his MacBook and cursing Austen’s uptight writing, “Corseted and Constipated” he suggests to her in a rage. But it soon clicks, because Austen, the unsuspecting 41-year-old virgin, (played rather too well by Nathan Butler), has a lot to say about love, which is what Brett is lacking. The play becomes increasingly real and honest as it unfolds, with Austen’s tumultuous sex scene a rather anti-climax as we are pushed down deep into the dark place of the night where lovelessness occurs. It’s a paper-ripping play of despair with emotional highs and lows, and shows that sex may sell, but love is richer. Preceding this is Gorgeous Bastard, a punchy play about three men at a straight wedding who discover that they each know the groom’s dirty secret. Whilst full of snappy gay-quips and monologues of sexual hilarity, compared to Jane Austen’s Guide to Pornography, it feels like a five minute animation before a feature.
Until Mar 12, Darlinghurst Theatre Company, 19 Greenknowe Ave, Potts Point, $30-37, 8356 9987, darlinghursttheatre.com
