Save The Lap Dance For Me
Save The Lap Dance For Me
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
Want a wee bit of sauce to go with your pie? Then Morag Fullarton's frisky little farce about an MSP determined to close down Edinburgh's lap-dancing clubs provides a merry mix of spice and salty humour with traces of serious issues on the side.
The huge artwork hanging upstage is a delightful clue: a spot-on pastiche of a JD Fergusson nude, all curvy pink flesh, wearing nothing but a half-smile, a string of beads and... what's this? A sheet of paper headed Scottish Parliament Enquiry is painted on like a fig-leaf. Enter Elspeth Stenhouse (Lindy Whiteford), visibly buttoned-up in her serviceable tweed jacket but with that slightly smuggins air of one who always assumes hers is the moral high ground.
She isn't a prude... she just wants to protect girls from hands-on gropers who pay for lap dances. Her opinions are soon stripped down to their ill-informed bias.
Fullarton has fun setting up her roster of Aunt Sallies - censorship, the cost of inquiries that frankly resolve nothing, the career politicians who seek out 'hot potato' causes are among them. But there's a pithy sub-thread or two woven among the pot-shots and punchlines. Dancers Destiny (Hanna Stanbridge) and Lexie (Ben Clifford, grooving in peerie heels and teensy tartan shorts) are thoroughly grounded, intelligent individuals - Destiny, moreover, is doing the state a service, caring for her dad (Steven McNicoll) whose stroke-affected speech is often hilarious but, in terms of McNicoll's expressive frustration, devoid of any ridicule.
The references to Knox evoke John, rather than Moira, but that Edinburgh councillor's zeal for casting filth out of the Fringe is surely an inspiration to - and for - the crusading Elspeth.
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