Tuesday 1 February 2000

Homme Fatale , Feb 1, 2000


by Barry Lowe
 at Theatreworks until February 12, 2000
Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Joey Stefano was famous for his bottom. We have to presume his bottom was spectacular because it made him a porn star and a sexual icon for both gay men and straight women. Some bottom, I say.

Of course, "bottom" was also a deprecatory term for the passive partner in anal sex. Joey, who was born just plain old white trash, Italo-Americano, Nick Iacona, craved attention - and sex. The ideal way to satisfy both needs was to make porn movies. His mother called him "an old whore with a drug problem". She was right too.

Barry Lowe's play, Homme Fatale, is a solo play performed by Stuart Halusz . Halusz's bottom features quite prominently too. He is naked at least fifty percent of the 90 minutes which probably roughly equal to Joey's own nakedness-to-time ratio.

This outer perimeter of the gay scene is always an eye-opener for those, like me, who live a sheltered existence in ordinary-land. If this were a television movie it would say, "Sex scenes, language, violence, drugs." Wear your sunglasses.

Halusz is a good actor with an exceptionally sinewy body and sweet face. His is a valiant performance as the beautiful and desperate joey as he overdoses on celebrity, degradation, lust and drugs - lots of drugs.

It is Halusz's sweetness that separates him from Joey. Joey was pure sex on screen and stage. He was fleshy, rough-edged with that inimitable Latin, seductive raunchiness. Halusz is good but he is not quite Joey.

Joey talks constantly, apart from a couple of awkward dance routines. Lowe makes him talk about every thought, every move across the country, every action, every sexual act. The production would be enhanced by some liberal cutting of text

Director, Robert Chuter, keeps the pace cracking, which is the way Joey lived until he died from an overdose in an LA motel room at the age of twenty-six. He killed himself with  "Special K", an animal anaesthetic.

Chuter has Halusz trapped on a narrow film set. Only his clothes and props are tossed out of frame. It is claustrophobic. After ninety minutes, we need some other dramatic action. Couldn't he climb the ladders at the edges of the set?

by Kate Herbert

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