REVIEW: Sexy Science! by Monkey Collective
Dimity Magnus and Steven Aaron Hughes are getting it on in the lab — and by “getting it on,” I mean “putting on a Fringe show,” and by “in the lab,” I mean “at Lazy Susan’s Comedy Den.” They’ve co-produced a wacky hour of sexy entertainment with the Monkey Collective, all in the name of Science! Magnus and Hughes go on a romp through the orgasmic origins of the universe and take us through time with amorous protozoa and stoned apes through the use of spiffy audio-visuals and funky handmade props and costumes. They also do live lab experiments, roping in audience members to make colorful substances explode out of tubes and other such naughty reactions.
While the show is sciency and nerd-tastic, it’s accessible and fun even for those who don’t have the first clue about biology other than what their bodies’ instincts tell them to do. Magnus and Hughes have a happy crew of followers who know them from other exploits around Perth; for instance Magnus runs Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School and Hughes seems to have fingers in a few different creative pies, so they know how to keep an audience entertained. And certainly on the evening I attended Sexy Science! the crowd was in stitches from the first big bang of confetti out of a massive popped balloon.
The Sexy Science! crew hits a few different pop-culture hot buttons, like Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and also David Bowie’s Life On Mars. They’ve built a fantastic plushy costume of some kind of microscopic organism (whose name I would have trouble pronouncing if I could remember it) that Magnus wears for one segment, making squeaky creature coos while she mates with an audience member. Hughes dons an ape mask and a banana codpiece to help explain Terrence McKenna’s Stoned Ape Theory of how Homo erectus (with plenty of emphasis on “erectus”) became Homo sapiens. The show has plenty of potential in these early stages of its development, and it ends with another big bang to plenty of cheers and hollers from a packed audience.
CICELY BINFORD