Melbourne comedy festival review by Steve Bennett

…Or everything you ever wanted to know about stripping but were afraid to ask. Nicole Henriksen took a job in a relatively upscale ‘gentleman’s club’ to fund her comedy ambitions – and being an inveterate performer, has turned those experiences into this semi-theatrical spoken word show.

She speaks candidly about everything from the camaraderie backstage to how her wildly varying nightly earnings engendered a dangerous gambler’s mentality to stay in the club, whatever its toll on her. What her friends, family and partner thought are also covered – even if she considers the latter an outrageously impertinent question.

All this personalises a business rarely seen in those terms, but Makin It Rain is not just a collection of first-hand experiences; Henriksen also opens up about wider issues of what can be a morally ambiguous business, and her take on what it says about gender, race and social politics. Such questions include, pertinently, why getting her tits out in a lapdance club is considered less acceptable than getting her tits out for a liberal middle-class comedy festival crowd? 

For yes, there is full nudity here. Her discussions, relaxed and open, frank about both the pros and cons of the business, alternate with scenes when she shows her lithe and sensual dancing skills. The transformation from real person to  uncomplicated fantasy is achieved only with a lighting change, but Henriksen completely switches character in the same instant. Her acting talents get another run-out when adopting the personalities of various punters, funny and entertaining scenes in which she reveals, perhaps surprisingly,  that it’s the laddish customers who are her favourites.

So she bares herself both physically and emotionally – though that wasn’t enough for one awful woman in the smallish audience, happily pecking away on her phone during this deeply personal confessional moment. What’s wrong with some people? Her rudeness another distraction for the rest of us in a room already drowned in noise bleed from the lively Tuxedo Cat bar just a curtain’s width a way.

Towards the end of this slightly over-long show, Henriksen delivers a long monologue about the morals and assumptions and sexual politics and the various -isms the sex industry provokes, although this does seem a little lecturey, compared to the way she more naturally addressed similar issues early on. Is it done to want a stripper to be less explicit?

Review date: 6 Apr 2016
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett