Private Dancer - Ms Fortuna at Galatos

Wendy McPhee's theatrical style blends cabaret, dance, sideshow and burlesque.

Ms Fortuna, who brings the fashionable spectacle of burlesque to Auckland and its tempo* dance festival, is actually a highly trained dancer named Wendy McPhee: ballet-trained and a Master of Fine Arts.

A decade ago, after an unconventional career with contemporary and circus companies in her native Australia and around the world, she formed her own company Softcore inc, honing a theatrical style that blends cabaret, dance, sideshow and burlesque.

An earlier pseudo-autobiographical work, Censored, in talk-show mode, revealed the perverse extremes of a life exclusively dedicated to the art of performing and telling lies, and the desire for stripping away artifice and finding honesty.

Her entrance in Private Dancer could not be more stripped of artifice - actually of everything bar a pair of studded white cowgirl boots and hat - as she emerges totally buff and bare.

With the support of MC Mr Henry Symes, a deadpan vulgarian in loud jacket and shiny pants, the ensuing show supposedly "investigates sexuality, desire and taboo" in a sleazy combo of vaudeville, raffles (the hapless "winners" become part of the show), hideous humour and totally tasteless erotic dancing.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" the little showpony exclaims early on. "We present to you an evening of bawdy entertainment, bad jokes and a couple of bad costumes."

And that is about the sum of it.

The jokes are bedrock bad, emphasised by Ms Fortuna's forced cackles, lip-licking and suggestive shaking of her pert little booty.

The costumes, when she bothers with one at all, are brief showgirl glitz and glare, with the exception of the black dominatrix number, complete with porky pink dildo emerging from a brief fringe of skirt.

The wigs are good, though.

She mimes songs, makes frequent forays into the audience to perch on punters' knees.

The audience seem a little dumbstruck. They are thinking: what a weird way to make a living. Thinking: this may be good therapy for the ballet-class refugee but what has it got to do with me?

They may be thinking that like Buddhist meditators on the Self, who ultimately discover no one is home, sexuality and desire stripped naked also offer a bit of a void.


Performance

Galatos, to Oct 14, 9pm (R18); Naked Truth lecture tonight, Galatos 7pm (R18)