A year ago, Adelaide’s Madame Josephine’s and the Crazy Horse Revue went on the market. In March, owner and creative director Joseph Farrugia finalised the sale of the business he has run for more than 30 years. Hindley Street, suggests Madame: The Story of Joseph Farrugia, may never be the same again.
Madame, a verbatim dance theatre work by Torque Show, is forged entirely from Farrugia’s own words (as Joseph but also as his alter ego, Josephine) and played by three separate performers. Ostensibly about the adult entertainment industry, what really lies at its core is an exploration of gender.
We hear how Joseph struggles but survives as a gay man in a “red-neck” environment and how young women’s bodies are really looked on in these clubs. Repeatedly, we delve into the complexity of Joseph’s creation of Josephine, one a confident performer, the other standing in the shadows doing the bookwork. “My penis was down to nothing,” he says of taking female hormones for 15 years to grow breasts “but I look fantastic for stage!”
Madame highlights not only the theatricali potential and true art of some adult entertainment, but also the idea of gender itself as performance. At times, Chris Scherer (as Joseph) sits talking in jeans and a polo shirt, as Kialea-Nadine Williams (Josephine) struts the stage in a blonde wig and a sequinned dress, miming his words, staking her place, demanding to be appreciated. But as she leaves the stage, we are left with Scherer’s Joseph sitting alone, legs crossed as he shies away from the audience.
The choreographic language is varied. Scherer uses small and precise movements as punctuation, Joseph’s stories and gestures growing as the stories become more frenzied. There is a knowing disconnect as Williams narrates dance sequences from the club while performing contemporary routines. Meanwhile, Stuart’s portrayal of Joseph in moments of candor and confession are stripped back, resting only on his words.
Co-presented by feminist theatre company Vitalstatistix means a particular lens is cast on proceedings: the audience uncomfortably laughs as Joseph talks about women being “put on earth to please men”; there is cutting silence as he recalls a “rape act” scene performed on stage in the 1980s, a slight disappointment in his voice it could no longer be shown for “political correctness.”
At other times, though, we are let into a man who is funny, intelligent, and prepared to be very vulnerable. And if the finale – a mimed drag performance to My Way – is cheesy, it’s a suitable closing to a show that, in the end, is celebrates its subject. As Josephine has claimed her space on stage for decades, Madame suggests that Joseph, too, deserves his turn in the spotlight.
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Madame: The Story of Joseph Farrugia runs until 2 May
