Desiree Burch @ Heroes, BlundaBus
Despite its title, Unfuckable is one hell of a ride
An early thought on the top deck of the Blundabus is, “Why is Desiree Burch wasting her first routine on something as common-or-garden as cats?” Actually, scratch that. It's only the congested nasal musings of a critic with a head cold. Everyone else here is thinking, “Go Desiree – stick it to the cat.” And besides, she's setting it all up, poised ready for a segue, and we follow felines down an alley into a modern office sex dungeon, into the world of a New York dominatrix.
“Has anyone ever wanked for an hour?” she says at one point, amid long tales of small penis humiliation and a Navy Seal who could wrestle the weight out of anybody. These experiences have left Burch with impressions that everyone has a price and everyone nurses a secret longing. But underneath this hurtling hour of stand-up – the pace of which never dips for a moment – certain questions are provoked. Does what we term a fetish say more about our attitudes towards body shapes and sizes than it describes some kink of personality? How is it that people who criticise us seem the most attractive, and the most suggestive of sex itself? How come language around oral sex has a gendered division of labour? Unfuckable is a celebratory hour of sex. And however sticky, and however much it involves a hairy short guy, the show is about sex as it actually is.