A highly enjoyable night of theatrical dance, sparking a reconsideration of the prudish moral limitations society imposes on the disabled community
Presented by: Adelaide Festival
Reviewed: 10 March, 2024
Private View encourages the audience to embrace their voyeuristic curiosity, as they peer into scenes of romantic journeys, longing for connection, and the sexual curiosity and desires of the disabled performers, complemented by a mixture of soulfully powerful songs from the formidable Carla Lippis.
The show is slickly made up of a series of theatrical dance vignettes depicting scenes such as an intimate dinner date, youthfully curious and cheeky teen girls at a sleepover, the overwhelming pain of rejection and loneliness, and a challenge to misguided and prudish overprotectiveness that denies the human right for sexuality within the disabled community.
The audience enters the unconventionally structured space, which has four stages curving around part of the audience while a dramatic mist hangs in the low-lit air. Hovering above are a large pair of eyes anointed with exaggerated glittery-blue eyeshadow that stare down on the audience. As the lights dim the scenario flips and the large glittery eyes disappear, encouraging the audience to become curious voyeurs about what’s about to unfold. Luscious red lips take the eyes’ place, singing a song with the lyrics “avec l’amour”. Then, to the audience’s visual and audible delight, the striking Carla Lippis appears in the spotlight singing live, cling wrapped in a slinky velvet bodysuit with voluminous tulle shoulders, coupled with her signature red lips, short black bob, and bold eye-makeup.
The four vignettes address both heartwarming and heartbreaking journeys to love, painful rejection and dismissal, and sexual curiosity and exploration – topics that in relation to disability are often not discussed or addressed both outside of and within the disabled community. Private View proudly faces this aversion head on, tackling the topics that others steer away from to provide educational progressive entertainment, while dealing with the topics with both elegance and light-hearted and relatable humour.
The theatrical dance numbers range from upbeat hip-jiving salsa to slower contemporary dramatics, and more playfully fun duets. All performances have their place within the show, but an especially enjoyable routine is a duet dance that artistically depicts two young girls at a sleepover in a bedroom. The audience fascinatedly peers through slitted blinds, as the girls depict a relatable teenage desire to become sexual, explore the body, play around with condoms, and mimc the sexually-suggestive poses of women in magazines, with the routine cleverly revolving around a spinning satin-covered bed.
The final routine also harks back to a very similar message presented in Restless Dance Company’s previous Adelaide Festival production Guttered, about the frustration of those with helicopter-like presences, preventing them from rightfully exploring their own sexual desires with the freedom and acceptance granted to their non-disabled peers.
Throughout the show, Carla intermingles with the vignettes, guiding the way like a supportive sexual fairy godmother, and sympathetically interacting with the performers in their scenes. Occasionally she breaks out into bold song, ensuring that the audience gets their fair share of the smooth, slinky and soulful vocals that she is renowned for. She also penetrates the barrier between audience and stage, taking both thoughtful and cheekily amusing questions about love and sex while located in the centre of the audience and dictating to whoever is seated closest to answer.
The imaginatively designed sets and semi-hidden stages are key to the success of the show, and while sharing the similarities of the privacy elements such as blinds or semi-transparent curtains, they help to clarify different individual personalities for each separate performance. Details like moody blue low-lighting, glazed semi-transparent windows, sex-work related red lights, paired with wistfully romantic outfits, like a dinner date tuxedo, and sexually-suggestive clothing, all work together dramatically to push the show’s theme.
Private View, as a combination of voyeuristically intimate scenes and the cabaret-esque personality of Carla Lippis and her spectacular vocals, creates a highly enjoyable night of theatre and dance that will spark a dramatic reconsideration in the audience members of the oppressive and prudish moral limitations society imposes on the disabled community.
Reviewed by Georgina Smerd
Photo credit: Matt Byrne
Venue: Odeon Theatre, Kaurna Country, 57A Queen Street, Norwood
Season: ended
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