Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else! —Theater review by Helen Shaw
Adrienne Truscott—or at least the version of her in Asking For It—loves to tell rape jokes. They're so hilarious! So topical! So terrifying in the hands of a woman without her pants on! If dudes defend their right to tell ’em, this bewigged, bewaxed dynamo is there to cheer them on, sometimes using her own blonde hairpieces as her spirit-girl pom-poms.
At face value, Asking For It is a stand-up set about whether or not rape jokes are funny—though performance artist Truscott is, of course, subverting the form. Your first clue is that she's wearing a jean jacket, naked from the waist down and chugging Coors Light. In a LIC comedy club, especially one presenting on behalf of the Chocolate Factory Theater and P.S. 122, it's the beer that's the giveaway. No Hefeweizen? She must be doing a bit. Truscott also puts her yoni where her mouth is—or, at least, where a video of someone else's mouth is. Between jokes about Daniel Tosh and Bill Cosby (“Oh, wait, he'd never do material like that!”), she positions herself so that a video can be projected on her pelvic area. Sometimes her well-tended pubic hair becomes Rick Ross's goatee; sometimes, when she's athletically standing on her head, it becomes Travis Bickle's mohawk.
The work is furious and aggressive. It's also funny and sweet. Truscott somehow strikes a number of tones at once and our emotions (made a bit more labile by the liberally distributed shots) struggle to keep pace. Some of her humor points at obviously ridiculous behavior by others (Tosh’s notorious joke about how hilarious it would be if a heckler got raped), but she also dances close to darker things. Her exaggeratedly cheerful drawl makes much of the routine even more terrifying. Real chills crawl up and down your spine when the performer chirps that she's delighted to make jokes about sexual assault: Black people, she says, can make jokes about black people, right? Jewish people can make jokes about Jews? You process what she's implying; it's like a poker in the gut.
Truscott slams a lot of Coors Light during the show, so she does sometimes wander beerily off course. She begins a coyly awful bit about slipping a guy a roofie (and then a corrective Viagra), but her attention peters (as it were) out. As with some stand-up, a too-generous crowd can squelch the mood; Truscott's spikiest moments come when she's against the room. A bunch of dance and performance-art buffs aren't shocked by a woman's naked body, so even when her pubis bops over at eye-height, many continue to twinkle and laugh. “The expression on this person's face!” Truscott exclaims, “It's sort of a combination of horror and money-well-spent.” But at the Creek and the Cave, no one was scandalized, only delighted, sympathetic and amused. There are those you'd like to drag to the show—Dane Cook, perhaps? But for some of those guys, they wouldn't laugh, even if you forced them.—Helen Shaw
The Creek and the Cave (Off-Off Broadway). Written and performed by Adrienne Truscott. Running time: 1hr 10mins. No intermission.