Betty Grumble: Love & Anger (MICF)

A self-anointed sex clown, Betty Grumble aka Emma Maye Gibson is a hurricane force feminist and burlesque revelation who knows how to eye-open a show. Cloistered in the intimately curtained space backstage of the Malthouse's cavernous Merlyn and dressed for all the world like a punk rock re-imagining of the possibly misunderstood Marie Antoinette, Love & Anger (or Sex Clown Saves The World AGAIN!) opens, quite literally, with an even more intimate view of her vulva.

Fingers nimbly miming, not monologuing, her private parts in time to her gale-force fury singing voice, from the very outset sex is both weapon and shield in this impassioned reclamation of the female form and its oft-denied space in this frustratingly patriarchal world.

If that sounds like a full-on first number, you'd be right, and yet Grumble is a mistress at bringing the audience along for the ride. Whipping us into a riotous frenzy, we can hardly fail to embrace this clitoral clarion call in the spirit in which it is intended. At pains to present this hour of goddess power as a safe space, we're triumphantly encouraged to get up and go with it, whooping and dancing with gay abandon, or given equal license to run for our lives.

In this rapidly shifting landscape of #MeToo and #TimesUp pushback, the simple act of a woman's body unmasked, stripped bit by bit of binding corset and just as enslaving make-up, feels like a radical reclamation that's vital, and never like shock value salaciousness. Even the faint of heart may find themselves frothing at this frenzy of fabulous erotica.

Part love incantation, part misogyny exorcism, Grumble never once stoops to stuffy preaching. Nothing could be further from her truth. Think Studio 54 as overrun by bra-burning priestesses who are just as likely to squeeze into their estranged mother's bodybuilding bikini. Third wave and beyond, notions of beauty are deconstructed alongside the smashing of the Madonna/whore narrative.

Unafraid to skate on the edge of outrage, Grumble quotes liberally from Valerie Solanas' The SCUM Manifesto. Grumble does not skirt away from its most confronting material, calling for the ridding of this Earth of all men (something she in no way wants), nor the fact that Solanas went on to infamously shoot Andy Warhol. Creating her own imperfect vision, she challenges us to imagine our own bodies, our actions and our world anew.

Does Love & Anger fit neatly into the comedy box? Perhaps not, though you'll likely hoot with laughter and joy nonetheless. Surrender to her glorious madness and you might just find yourself enlightened. And when all is said and undone, if you thought that opening gambit couldn't be topped, you might just find yourself going home with a little souvenir that does exactly that.

Betty Grumble presents Love & Anger until Apr 22 at the Malthouse Theatre, part of the 2018 Melbourne International Comedy Festival