Show Me Yours, I’ll Show You Mine

This play will haunt you.

Ostensibly this is a series of six interviews with a male sex worker. We aren’t told why or for what medium. (Of course, if we read the programme we would have known this piece played successfully at the Tamarama Rock Surfers Festival and went on to win a major award at the 2012 Melbourne Fringe Festival.)

On entry, each actor identifies himself and his part – first, Nick (Charles Purcell) the male prostitute, then Tim Spencer, as the writer/actor/interviewer.

Effectively then, Purcell plays three roles in this: dramaturg with Spencer on the script development; confident, got-it-all-together, smartly dressed Nick (a professional pseudonym, and as whom he is dressed initially), who discusses what clients expect of him and how he handles those situations within his own parameters; and the real person Not-Nick (he switches into everyday dags part-way through) who gradually reveals that he is a university student and this pays his fees and living expenses. 

Performances of both were totally convincing: spontaneity; natural think pauses; vocal stumbles; obvious interviewer discomfort about how to address delicate questions; and automatic comfortable responses from the sex worker  ̶ all sounded improvised. Slowly, slowly, the tables turn as the interviewer exhausts his prepared questions and to fill the gaps, Not-Nick elaborates on things he said before, and tosses questions to the interviewer.

So we begin to discover things about the interviewer. Possibly about ourselves too?  Enigmatic and engaging!

Jay McKee

Images: Charles Purcell & Tim Spencer. Photographer: Sarah Walker.