If you like seeing fat crazy women jerk off onstage, then River Huston has made a play for you. The latest work from antiheroine extraordinaire Huston, Sex, Cellulite & Large Farm Equipment, is an abrasive, offensive, honest and necessary look at life from the perspective of a woman who has quite literally done it all.
Sex is a one-woman show that explores the feelings of elation, confusion and depression encountered on Huston's unique journey. Working as everything from a nomadic hippie to a Pennsylvanian poet laureate, Huston describes her experiences with admirable candor. An especially interesting role she assumes is the jovial face of a woman living with AIDS. A role that initially leads her to attempted suicide --which she depicts with tragicomic grace -- eventually allows her to channel her self-expression into sobering poetry.
The performance is also enhanced with graphic sexual mime, discussions of genital odor and stalker-turned-husband stories. Drawing upon her experience in the lecture circuit and as a spoken-word artist, the show is peppered with exceptional poetry at dramatic moments. Despite living with a terminal and often misunderstood illness, Huston uses her life as an example of the myriad opportunities available regardless of one's circumstances. One weakness of the show is its saccharine ending, in which Huston brings out her albeit adorable dog and tells the audience to pretend it is a cute puppy if it ever questions its self-worth.
The frank nature of the show stems from Huston's intent not to please a certain dramatic or artistic crowd, but rather to tell her tale through an intriguing mix of poetry and storytelling. Having never read poetry before, in a matter of months she became a poet laureate. Similarly, lacking a dramatic background she has now performed all over the world. But in the end, she emphasizes, what makes her lucky is her friends and family.
