How to Be Sexy

Upstairs at The Butterfly Club, Jordan Barr is already on stage as the last of audience files in and sits down. Her one-woman variety show How to Be Sexy begins with Barr stepping centre stage and announcing the central conceit of the show: she is in Hell; the eighth circle, to be precise, which has been fashioned into a nightclub bathroom. She is trapped in the bathroom for eternity, but has been preparing a thesis in the hopes of being freed from her prison (more like: society’s prison, am I right?) What follows is a series of sketches structured as her ‘thesis’, titled How to Be Sexy, which she is presenting to Satan himself (among others).

The name of the show, if you hadn’t already guessed, is a very glib, and not-so-serious description for what’s to come. Barr performs a series of hilariously barb-tongued, clever sketches deconstructing the perception of women’s sexuality, and how relentlessly difficult it can be for a woman to take possession of her own sexuality, in the face of a man’s own prevailing sexual desire. It is unsurprising that the women in the room laughed the loudest (myself included).

In one sketch, she eviscerates the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, made infamous by male-written female characters in films such as Garden State (Zach Braff’s contribution to this asinine female character trope gets an acid-tongued mention). In another, she plays a woman rhapsodising about her pseudo-relationship with a piggish, sexually deviant AFL player who refuses to call her his girlfriend, as she slathers herself in Greek yoghurt – a reference to bizarrely ‘sexy’ yoghurt commercials. Barr flits between these characters with ease, as sketches are punctuated by ‘80s female pop hits, driving the nightclub-bathroom-set home. How to Be Sexy ends ambiguously – is her message enough to free her from eternal damnation? Maybe not, but you’re probably laughing too hard to care.

How to Be Sexy 
The Butterfly Club, 5 Carson Place, off Little Collins Street
Till Sunday, 15 April 2018, 7pm
comedyfestival.com.au/2018/shows/how-to-be-sexy