Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Considering it features specialist porn and a live sex act, in which a member of the audience is recruited into an exchange of money for a remote client’s gratification, Lane Kwederis’ Sex Job is often surprising but never gratuitously shocking.

Instead, it offers an enlightening insight into some of the more niche aspects of sex work that doesn’t glamorise the profession nor shrink from sharing its bleaker, more troubling aspects.

As an American improv comedian with a degree in musical theatre, Kwederis appears as perky as you might expect. And much more so when she goes tits-and-teeth for her opening number, revealing her leather corset and that she’s also a financial dominatrix – men pay her money for the pleasure of paying her money. They walk to cash machines together, the guy gives her his card and pin number and then gets off from her withdrawing significant amounts of money out of his account.

There’s probably a metaphor for the costs of performing at the Fringe in there somewhere. Regardless, it ostensibly seems like a dream gig. Kwederis never gets nude, and never shares her identity online. And even when a client started wanting her to dress in lingerie under an overcoat while he filmed the transactions, the viral clips made her career.

Stumbling into her 15-year profession by accident, it was that improvising spirit of ‘yes, and…’ that saw her enter a foot fetish party naively yet emerge as a dominatrix. Contrary to popular perception of her trade, Kwederis maintains that she’s an instinctive people-pleaser and learning to say ‘no’ has been a character-building exercise in every sense. She’s good at her job, the parallels between it and improv are stark, with the only major divergence being that she only makes a living off one of them.

Why, then, is Kwederis relating her life in a dark, Fringe room with paying strangers rather than actually living it in a presumably better-ventilated dungeon in New York? Well, on the positive side, she’s a charismatic, versatile performer with a droll wit and obvious, clear-sighted intelligence. And she appreciates that she’s got a distinctive story to share.

But the path of professionally treading on men in stilettos so hard that you cause them permanent injury seldom runs smooth. However, this particular client retains a metaphorical as well as literal soft spot for the episode. 

More urgently, Kwederis relates the prejudices that sex workers face in a society that does so much to facilitate them, particularly online. And yet simultaneously does so much to shut them down whenever one of the big tech or credit card companies has a sporadic Spasm of prudishness.

At the same time, for every old-fashioned, Southern gentleman willing to forgive a broken bone as part of his pleasure, there’s a toxic ex-boyfriend who insists he’s absolutely fine with her career until he’s truly au fait with the reality.

Kwederis also paints her younger self as quite Pollyannaish, surprised when moneyed, aggressive clients suddenly shifted the balance of power back to themselves. This meant that she did, on occasion, break her own boundaries. Interestingly, I would say that the sliding scale of services she provides have sometimes tipped into sex by my definition but not, seemingly, by hers. And in the jargon of therapy speak, she’s done the work of confronting her internalised shame and learning to celebrate her vocation.

Yet for all of her all-singing and dancing finale, a sort of personal variation on Alex Borstein’s great, sarcastic sing-along routine to Tina Turner’s Private Dancer, Kwederis is wise enough to know that some of that shame psychically lingers. 

While repeatedly and persuasively arguing for the rights and protection of sex workers, as well as a lack of judgment in her room, experience has taught her to roll with the unpredictability of her day job. The judgment of comedy critics and the volatility of Fringe audiences, by comparison, ought to be a breeze.

Review date: 4 Aug 2023
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Underbelly Bristo Square