Writer: Cat Gannon
Director: Avery McNeilly & Savannah Beckford
Pitched somewhere between stand-up, cabaret, and brutally unvarnished confessional monologue, Cat Gannon’s searingly in-your-face single-hander, Dominus, explores the costs and consequences of their character Deborah’s journey from mild-mannered religious girl to ball-kicking dominatrix. Avery McNeilly and Savannah Beckford direct impeccably; though, it has to be said, the outcome is not an easy 75-minute watch. Still, Gannon imbues the damaged protagonist with such visceral vulnerability that it is hard to take your eyes off her, however much one might sometimes want to.
“Everything in the world is about sex, except sex, which is about power”, says catsuit-clad Deborah, AKA dominatrix Mistress D, misquoting both Oscar Wilde and Kevin Spacey in House of Cards. The aphorism sums up the frame of mind she brings to her job, though perhaps vocation would be a better word. Bullying white men into giving her money is a way for a black woman to even the odds in a world dominated by powerful “white banker wankers”. Oh, and it gives her something to talk about at parties, not that she is invited to parties much. Simple, really.
Mistress D prowls the stage, cabaret microphone in hand, treating the audience, with whom she interacts vociferously throughout, as if we are an assembly of submissive clients (a grovel of underlings might be a suitable collective noun). She is here to tell us just how much she loves her job and why she does it, and, well, fuck us all if we just do not get it. Except we soon learn that the joyously loud and proud dominatrix Mistress D is something of an unreliable narrator. What she is really thinking – the dark, condemnatory superego to the shiny surface ego – flashes up on the screen behind her as she speaks. And it is very far from pretty.
Taking us through the gruesome details of client (kick him in the nuts), after client (throw food at him), after client (empty his family bank account), we learn she has quite literally “pegged the rainbow, as it were”. How does she dream it up? “Most of BDSM is remembering what my bully would do to me in year 4”, she says, though of course, there is more to what motivates her dedication to her craft than that.
The ‘more to it’ comes in the form of reluctantly revealed backstory. We learn of her evangelical upbringing by a strict Nigerian mum and an emotionally absent father. We see what comes close to a rape at age 19, revealed in a beautifully choreographed ballet-infused sequence of physical theatre that will stay with you long after you leave the theatre. We get a beautifully sung Broadway-style musical number, a nod to Deborah’s one-time role as leader of the church choir, and to her first love, a boy who looked like Morrissey (“but without the racism”).
Gannon has an immensely engaging stage presence and an intense, almost manic level of commitment to their character. “Don’t I seem wonderful?” Mistress D asks, well, demands that we acknowledge towards the end. Yes, she is a wonderful, powerful stage creation, just not in the way she wants us to believe. Dominus is a tough but immensely rewarding dive into the dark, angry, underbelly of one person’s life in BDSM sex work. If you can take it, see it.
Runs until 30 May 2026
