Skin House
Quiet Little Fox @ The Tuxedo Cat – Blue Room
8:45pm, Mon 21 Feb 2011
The Blue Room has been transformed into a lounge room – a very homely, intimate lounge room – and it feels almost voyeuristic as we wander in, performers Kristina Benton and Fleur Kilpatrick already onstage. The dim house lights drop, and we’re immediately thrust (fnarr, fnarr) into a frank discussion of the sex industry. Prompted by Fleur’s queries, Kristina unfolds her life working first as a prostitute, then as a madam; it’s certainly a bold and impressive opening.
The only problem is that doesn’t really progress from there… and that works both for and against this production.
On the negative side, it’s almost as if Skin House plays all its high cards early; after the opening, there’s very little to jolt the audience for the rest of the show. But maybe that’s the (positive) point: by peaking early, a stable matter-of-fact platform is established for the tales that follow (which range from the emotionally intimate to the graphically physical); it’s all presented in an almost casual manner, just two girls chatting over a glass of wine. And, as you’d expect from such a conversation, there’s expressions of astonishment and incredulity punctuated with seemingly genuine, heartfelt laughter; and, to break the flow, the girls occasionally slip into song. Unfortunately, the almost predictable (and it feels so wrong to type that, given the autobiographical nature of the piece) revelation of sexual abuse is somewhat clumsily wodged into the narrative; there’s a decent ending to proceedings, however.
The set lends a comfortable intimacy to the conversation: the staging feels very much like a safe haven, somewhere to which Kristina would retire for respite. Maybe that was a deliberate stage direction, maybe not; but it certainly was memorable. But the other enduring memory is of the friendship of these women on stage; there’s a rapport, a genuine sense of connection between them. And that’s both heartwarming and – oddly – a little bit icky; at times, I felt like I was spying on a conversation I shouldn’t have been privy to.