Writer: Rachel Isobel Heritage
Director: Saffron Woolven
Whiplash is set in a dodgy-looking Gentlemen’s Club, with a pole upstage centre and a travelling set of furniture and screens making a variety of locations downstage. The action is split fairly evenly between chatty backstage tableaux and dances on the pole by the female cast. Pole dancing looks to be an art form that cries out for leg-warmers and dancing pumps, but the acceptable costume appears to be eye-wateringly high spike heels on the clumpiest of platform shoes. Elegance and grace are consequently not on anyone’s agenda, and the dancers prefer to vibrate in an erotically charged manner.
The conversations downstage mostly revolve around working conditions, and exploitation, and a generally unfavourable opinion of Men. Also sympathetic sisterly advice on how to better dance on a pole. They may all be rocking scanty lingerie, but they also present a united front to management to get better rates of pay and better protection from creeps.
There are a variety of creeps on display – principally a predatory patron called John, and to a lesser extent an investigative journalist seeking scandal stories so she can shut the club. She comes in for a lot of serious and well-argued criticism, for assuming that she represents the best interests of the sex workers without bothering to find out what they think their best interests are. The loudest cry of this play is for agency, for protection and regulations that will make the work safer but still allow the women involved to manage their own affairs and to dance in their scanties if that’s what they choose to do.
The other creep, a violent abuser who seems to have an in with management, generates the majority of the action on stage that isn’t pole related and his story is woven through the play, but the focus is on the dancing and the backstage camaraderie.
Rachel Heritage takes her audience into a world they mostly only know from walking past seamy dives with blacked-out windows, and it’s an eye-opening journey. The audience also gets a chance to appraise a variety of pole dances. Lots of new ground to cover. The pick of the acting comes from Chris Asha playing Victor the club owner, with a winning display of tamped-down aggression and total bemusement. Hannah Cauch plays Nemesis, whose story of abuse and revenge drives the plot, and Rachel Heritage takes on another role as Nickii, the dancer’s shop steward.
Runs until 17 August 2024
Camden Fringe runs until 25 August 2024
