By Stuart Miller…
Issy Knowles’ solo show about a sex worker knows how to get your attention but may not leave you satisfied.
Small theaters continually struggling financially have found a minor salvation in the solo show. But with so many solo shows springing up each year, as if Edinburgh Fringe is invading the city each year, it is harder and harder for one to break through the clutter and grab your attention.
Issy Knowles has solved that problem. In “Body Count” the British writer/actor commands the stage as a sex worker determined to reap a fortune by having sex with 1,000 men in 12 hours for her desperately horny and generous OnlyFans audience.
Early on Knowles strips off her robe and is “nude” the rest of the show, but she’s actually wearing a silicone, anatomically correct breastplate and underwear. That barrier of artifice between Knowles and her character, Pollie, and also between Pollie and the pathetic men trooping through is an effective metaphor, something the show could have used more of.
There are also some powerful soliloquies, notably one where she sarcastically muses about how these men earn their living in a “more dignified’ way:
“It’s much more honourable to work in a factory for forty years, breaking your back day in and day out for minimum wage. That’s a much better way to sell your body. I’m just a poor, helpless, little millionaire. Living in my townhouse in Chelsea. Building an empire. Challenging patriarchal norms.”
“Body Count” is clearly inspired by OnlyFans “performers” like Bonnie Blue, who have made millions performing dehumanizing stunts like this. Knowles succeeds for much of the hour: she makes the audience squirm with discomfort at what Pollie is willing to endure even if we don’t believe her when she declares, “What I’m doing is liberating, it’s empowering;” and when she switches to portray some the men in sharp and succinct depictions (an incel virgin, a married man who chokes Pollie), Knowles makes the audience cringe, repulsed by their inability to forge a real human connection and saddened by a society that has reached this point.
In between playing the men, Knowles acts as if she’s getting f**ked (even the phrase “having sex” feels too intimate and humane here), while telling us Pollie’s backstory. And this is where the show falls short. (Apparently, so did “1000 Men and Me,” a documentary about Bonnie Blue, which reviewers said failed to really coax real and satisfying answers out of its steely subject.)
Knowles never gives us enough of an understanding about what led Pollie to this point. She’s taught by the Catholic Church that sex is shameful (but, yeah, that’s nothing new); she has a weird and unsatisfying first and second sexual experience (entertaining anecdotes but fairly mundane in terms of character) and then heartbreak and a boring job in consulting. Then she stumbles into sex work and finds it to be easy money.
But those pieces are sketched in quickly– the whole show is just an hour– and if we’re meant to see that it’s merely a dangerously slippery slope from her first time as an accidental escort to this disaster Knowles fails to show us that, leaving us way too many gaps to fill in ourselves.This is a case where the play was actually crying out for another 10-15 minutes, for the playwright to take her time and dig deeper into the character and the weighty issues she has raised. We don’t need everything spelled out and handed to us but some genuine insight and commentary, or at least incisive questions would elevate this from an extended sketch to a true piece of theater.
Knowles is charismatic and shifts gears between characters and moods remarkably well but in the end the show echoes Pollie’s performance. Being beautiful and dynamic isn’t enough for a satisfying experience and without more meaningful connection between two people or between a play and its audience, we leave feeling a bit empty inside.
“Body Count” is playing at SoHo Playhouse, 15 Van Dam Street through March 29th. Running time is one hour.
Photos by Geve Penn.
