Sex, Drugs & Hairy Bumholes – Hen & Chickens Theatre, Highbury & Islington (Camden Fringe)

Reviewer: Christine Stanton

“Confident, Candid & Crude”

3.5 / 5

~This review was originally written for The Reviews Hub ~

As expected, Danielle Scott’s one-woman comedy features a lot of sex, a cocktail of various drugs and one minor mention of hairy bumholes. Her confidently crude, no holds barred approach on dating leaves no stone unturned, talking to the audience as if you’re in her circle of friends, going into great detail about her life and relationship.

The show starts with Candy (the show’s protagonist) and her single life – drunkenly meeting men in clubs and swiping (hopefully left) through the 100 photos of men inexplicably holding fish on Tinder. Although she has fun, she’s getting fed up with the same repetitive circle of events and starts to wish she could settle down with someone like-minded and desirable. So, when she meets a stranger on a night out, she’s shocked to realise he ticks all of her boxes – good-looking, generous, spontaneous, and with a huge… heart. She falls head over heels quickly and intensely. They jet off to Thailand together for a few weeks in the sun, and move in together quickly on their return. Although there are quite a lot of red flags there, the good seemingly outweighs the bad – so surely it’s not worth breaking up with him over a few bad attitudes and nasty remarks, is it?

Scott has a great balance of humour and drama within the script, using her natural comedic talent and high energy to engage the audience and relay each part of the narrative. She navigates through the experiences of unrequested dick pics and hungover toilet naps at work effortlessly, while morphing into a multitude of characters, easily conveying the difference between them by using various accents and an occasional prop. While her strengths are her candid tales of dating and sexcapades, her emotional recounting of coercive control and the uncertainty of whether she should leave adds an unexpected layer to the show, woven in easily to the rest of the narrative, while still keeping the aspect of humour throughout.

If you’ve made it into a show titled Sex, Drugs and Hairy Bumholes you’re probably not shy about the subject matter, so embrace the wild encounters and unbridled stories, and prepare for an underlying seriousness to help balance out the raciness.

Runs until 24 August 2023