Green Porno

Green Porno
Conceived and Performed by Isabella Rossellini. Text by Isabella Rossellini and Jean-Claude Carriere. Artistic Guidance: Muriel Mayette. Lighting Designer and Video: Antoine Manichon. English Translation: Julia Groopman. Adelaide Festival. Her Majesty's Theatre. March 15-16, 2014, and touring.

Did you ever think you would be learning about sex from international icon Isabella Rossellini? Did you ever think that a lecture about animal life could be so raunchy, yet so fun?

Welcome to a strange new frontier in education and entertainment, combining a live presentation (delivered mostly from behind a lectern) with extraordinarily resourceful and funny filmed footage of a costumed Rossellini demonstrating (in often disconcerting detail) just what the non-humans of this world get up to in their quest for a mate!

Some of the more memorable comic highlights include:

- The variety of options that are apparently available to a dolphin.

- The melodramatic saga of a female duck.

- A hypothetical restaging of the Biblical story of Noah.

- Use of a tape-measure...

As the examples and variations accumulate (whether comparable or contrasting), one is almost inevitably tempted to look for metaphorical meaning in these animal antics. If this is what you seek, you can surely find it, but many viewers will be content simply to bask in the fascination of these lives that share the Earth with us – not to mention the sheer artistic creativity (and hilarity) on display.

Rossellini is enchanting throughout, exerting a unique fascination with the sheer relentless focus of this singular presentation (with a couple of brief detours in which she remembers her parents). If her aim was to entertain and inform while also provoking and challenging our comfort zones, then she has surely succeeded.

Anthony Vawser

Photographer: Jody Shapiro.

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