Review: Penny Arcade

The virtues of listening to Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive 35 times in a row

★★★
theatre review (adelaide) | Read in About 2 minutes
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Penny FINAL SQUARE FULL
Published 18 Feb 2019

Over the course of 90 minutes Penny Arcade excoriates the political correctness movement that she feels has overtaken the community that raised her. She laments the loss of that queer culture with misty-eyed recollections while also regularly courting controversy through her language. She revels in offence, both real and staged, and declares at the start of the show, “This is not a safe space.” That much is evident when a heckler interrupts her closing monologue and she rounds on him with righteous fury.

Her passion is never in doubt, though at times her extended monologues are undercut by false equivalencies or an insistence on lecturing about the right to take offence with absolute authority. But she offers many salient points about the way we treat ourselves, and the way we allow ourselves to be treated by society. In between, she shares the stage with seven erotic dancers (many drawn from Hindley Street) who are the living embodiment of the freedom of expression that she’s defending. They take the stage half an hour before the ticketed opening time, and show off moves as impressive as any of the acrobats at this Fringe.

Though the show is 25 years old, many of the concepts are still frighteningly relevant and it now contains some updated references to the Trump era. The result is a passionate, if sometimes flawed, defence of free speech by a performer who lives as she preaches.