BABECITY Hotline review (Melb Fringe)

If you're looking for a good time, the BABECITY Hotline is the number to call. These bevy of experts are here to make all your (sex) dreams come true. But they have dreams, wants and desires of their own and with the support of each other they might just get them.

Presented as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, BABECITY Hotline is inspired by lived experiences in sex work within the creative team, so it is disappointing to see how undefined the characters are, and part of this is because the show is trying to cover too much in too short a time. Introducing six characters in a 50-minute show is a difficult task and the result here is that we don't get to know these people. It's also unclear why the writers chose to go down the path they did with a fiery moment that does nothing to progress anyone’s arc or leave any impact.

Love By The Hour - Midsumma Festival review

In Caleb Darwent's Love By The Hour, Eve announces to her friends that she is a sex worker. She is tired of hiding it and no longer wishes to feel any shame with what she does. As she sees it, it is simply a business transaction. Until one of Eve's friends requests to book her services that leads them both to question their ideas on friendship, sex and closeness, and if it is possible to distinguish between them. 

While the script keeps its attention on Eve and Ashish, Darwent opens the conversation to issues around being trans, racism within the LGBTQ community, loneliness and the struggles that many face with accepting who they are. This makes Eve and Ashish more well- rounded and fleshed out and they become something greater than their current circumstances. This is supported by Kitt Forbes' direction where the characters express themselves through tender body language and gentle touches of physical contact.

Love By The Hour - Midsumma Festival preview

Darwent & Gray are known for creating musical comedies exploring sex, sexuality and gender. Their previous outing, The Rest Is Drag, looked at the labels we place on ourselves and the complexity of building relationships based on those labels. For the 2020 Midsumma Festival, the company is yet again tackling labels and relationships but in a theatrical drama without their trademark music and songs.

Love By The Hour investigates the boundaries of friendship when one discovers his friend is a sex worker and decides to book them for an evening. Writer Caleb Darwent drew from a number of events and moments in their life that subsequently released a Pandora's box of ideas to navigate through. "The central concept sprung from a conversation with a friend of mine who had recently been offered money for sex by a Grindr Daddy. They were contemplating accepting his offer and start to do sex work. My first thought was how awkward and inappropriate it would be if I were to hire them, considering our pre-existing non-sexual friendship. The more I considered this, the more ethically complicated I realised it was," they tell me.

Bella Green Is Charging For It - Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Bella Green began working in the sex industry in 2003, with her first job at a peep show venue. Since then she’s worked in brothels, including a year in BDSM, and as a private sex worker. In Bella Green Is Charging For It, Green recalls her sex work experiences – both hilarious and bizarre – while highlighting the setbacks and frustrations of being in an industry that is not acknowledged as legitimate work and seeks to disempower those in it.

Green ensures that the stories she shares with us involve more than just herself standing behind a microphone and speaking. When she is telling the audience about her Centrelink fraud accusation, she creates a film noir environment with costumes and voice. Another scene plays out between her and a fellow sex worker watching TV and talking about their jobs as clients patiently wait in the next room. Her demonstration of the worst songs to strip to – including “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” – allows the audience a further glimpse into Green’s world. It is as much of a “show and tell” as possible with Bella Green Is Charging For It.