The Most Naked, A Cabaret of Skin and Bone begins in burlesque seduction but uncovers and penetrates the darker psyche of sexuality with a stunning performance by Hannah Tasker-Poland.
Hannah is the creator, producer and performer of this show under the auspice of her ProjectMUSE performing arts company.
She draws on her multi-faceted arts career of dance, burlesque, actress and special effects stuntwoman. She is a powerful singer as well.
The show begins with two burlesque dancers on stage as the audience are filing into the Loft stage at Q theatre. As you would expect of a sexy cabaret welcome, Lucy Lynch and Holly Finch are attractive and stimulating, in a pleasant relaxing atmosphere of a high-class brothel.
There is expectation and arousal. The title titillates, but what does most mean? We are primed to see skin and flesh, bumps and protrusions. But there is an air of unease as the show starts and the two dancers sashay off.
The stage is draped in red curtains with a central portal as a vaginal entrance. Which is universal to many cultures. A raised central platform is where a body is prone under a large blanket.
This is starting to look like the mysterious Red Room from Twin Peaks, and foreboding enters, or slips into our heads. A little hint of dread.
The figure is draped like a Mummy, and layers are peeled off. The face is covered and appears misshapen or amorphous.
It is a relief to see the face finally, of an attractive woman. A make-up box is handed to her to complete the portrait and we feel at ease again.
Hannah is dressed in clinging black, sequinned and sparkling. She reclines on a grand piano after she has introduced Lucien Johnson to the stage.
Johnson is a highly regarded New Zealand musician and composer, with a doctorate in music performance. He has written the live music that is performed tonight.
Piano that is sophisticated cabaret pop, and a baritone saxophone which branches out into avant-garde Jazz. Swinging from Sonny Rollins to Albert Ayler, but more specifically Ornette Coleman at times.
Hannah narrates for us our inner voice, about our expectations and the state of arousal. Becomes intimate and uncomfortable, like Hannibal Lecter getting into your head. I am presuming this is a similar experience for women. Then again, I have no right to presume that.
The arousal that she conveys climaxes in waves. Her singing becomes banshee-like with a deep feminine roar, as if she is heading into terrifying Diamanda Galas territory.
After she slides off the piano and resumes the burlesque, her face contorts and twists and she displays uncontrollable nervous tics and spasms, almost to the point of an epileptic fit.
She is being pulled or assaulted by unseen forces.
It is then that I realize we are in William Burrough’s Interzone. The central part of Naked Lunch, which much later was fashioned into a stand-alone book. The Wild West of the psyche where All is permitted shall be the whole of the law.
Naked Lunch was coined by Jack Kerouac for Burroughs. That frozen moment in time when everyone suddenly sees what reality is, on the end of their fork.
Most Naked is opening a woman to the full-blown Anima spirit of Jung, terrifying and exhilarating simultaneously.
She morphs into a creature that comes from the fevered imagination of David Cronenberg when he made his film version of the unfilmable Naked Lunch. A breast as a phallus. A penis replaces a nipple. Buttocks have eyes.
The audience that attends tonight also seems to include the wild and exotic. Front of stage are several cabaret tables. There probably are a few Mugwumps in here, hiding in plain sight.
The Full Monty moment heralds a transition back to safety and calm.
But Hannah is not done yet.
She talks of the time the female nude body became a cause for fear and unspeakable violence. The time of the witch hunts in the 17th century, of which the Salem witch trials were but one of many. The frenzied orgy of violence in Europe reached such proportions, that Switzerland came close to losing the ability to procreate.
Hannah transforms into a Succubus, and she is joined by Holly and Lucy as the Macbeth Witches become all-powerful. Supported by the dissonant saxophone.
What a wild ride. A witch hysteria arose in 2020 and set the world on fire along with any common sense.
Most Naked by Hannah Tasker-Poland is a wonderful, cathartic and erotic experience as well as a full-frontal assault in the realm of the senses.
The Show runs through 23 June at Q Theatre.
Rev Orange Peel