Imagine a food show or home infomercial where a live demonstration is being carried out on how to cook a stir fry or remove pesky stains from your carpet. Now imagine instead your friendly demonstrator teaching you about the art of male masturbation.
That simply is Wank Bank, a hilarious tutorial derived from artist Rural Ranga’s (Adam Seymour) experiences earning extra money giving happy ending massages in New York. This ‘project’ resulted in the 2014 book, Wank Bank – comprising of 50 client sketches. The only criticism of this show is that the effort was not taken to sell this book to complete the connection. It is not often I would encourage a presenter to ‘flog off’ their own merchandise (pun intended).
In this ‘masterclass’, each audience member can learn techniques such as the ‘Gates of Consciousness’, ‘Palm Sunday’ and ‘Hand Grenade’ – using the complimentary carrot or cucumber found in a take-home showbag, along with a handy instructional sheet (laminated for obvious reasons). Audience members are invited up to the stage for a live demonstration (using the vegetables of course), and the class was educational judging by the audible moments of clarity from many of the audience members.
Although the show could have easily been confronting, the soft and friendly tone by Rural Ranga and overall light-hearted approach to the subject cleverly merged the topic with a parody of all those do-it-yourself classes.
I don’t think I need to mention this is for adults only, and do not see this show with a relative unless you want things to become awkward very quickly. For those wishing to learn about the art of female masturbation, Seymour’s cousin Strawberry Siren runs a separate masterclass called, Pussy Play.
Wank Bank
The Butterfly Club, 5 Carson Place, Melbourne
Performance: Thursday 30 March 2017 – 8.30pm
Season continues to 2 April 2017
Bookings: www.thebutterflyclub.com
For more information, visit: www.ruralranga.com for details.
Image: Adam Seymour (aka Rural Ranga)
Review: Jimmy Twin