‘Sex Tips’ a trip to Chuck-E-Cheese for women
DETROIT, Mich.–When you go to a show called Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man, there are only a couple of scenarios. Either it’s going to be witty and funny, or bawdy and tacky. This show, playing at the City Theatre this week, is much more of the latter, but 99% of the patrons in the house seemed to go for that.
The show, playing Off Broadway and now touring, is based on the book by Dan Anderson and Maggie Berman, published in 1997. Based on posting my assignment to see the show on Facebook and the comments that it attracted, I take it a lot of women I know enjoyed the book. Perhaps their significant others did too. Not having read the book, I cannot attest to how close the show cleaves to the original.
The set up for the show is that Dan Anderson (played by Sean Hankinson) has come to a university to give a talk on the book and be interviewed by uptight, under-sexed staffer Robyn (Jacklyn Collier). Lurking about is light and sound man for the interview event, Stefan (Brooks Christopher), a Russian who ends up being a hunky stage prop for Dan and members of the audience invited to try out some of Dan’s advice –rubbing his pectorals and twisting his nipples, etc. There are lots of penis sight gags, and audience members are invited to call out their euphemisms for the male member.
This is where the show breaks down to just being novelty theater. It’s not a play. I guess I can call it a “show.” But it is a show that has no story, and is more of a Vegas lounge act than anything else.
Hankinson plays the part as a very flamboyant, over-the-top gay man. Collier is the uptight “hottie.” Stefan is the stiff.
At one point during the unfolding of the act, I thought to myself that this is not so much theatre as it is something that a group of boozy women in a bridal party would come to. And then, lo and behold, as I was perusing the program, there it was on the back page: “Throw A Sex Tips Party–Packages available for bachelorettes, birthdays, girls and guys night out, and more.”
Think of this low-brow show as a Chuck-E-Cheese for women carrying their third and fourth cocktail into the theater. Lots of people in the audience enjoyed it, so there is a market for the show. God Bless.