Original Review:

But when this former Barry Award-winner got the chance to visit the lions’ den - the religion’s home in Salt Lake City – she leapt at the chance. And no wonder, given the wealth of material those teetotal, polygamy-loving Mormons have handed her on a plate, with their wacky beliefs that men can attain the status of gods, or that Jesus visited America just after his resurrection - to name but two.

“I thought I was fucked up until I went to Utah,” Post says of the people she met there. Perhaps the state’s tourist officials might consider adopting that as a bumper-sticker slogan.

But for all her observations about the oddities of life in Salt Lake City, she doesn’t go much beneath the surface. Even the very reason for her visit, at the invitation of an association of gay and lesbian Mormons, leaves the fundamental question of how homosexuality is accepted by such a puritanical society unanswered.

Perhaps is because she’s also written a book and made a yet-to-be-aired documentary about her trip that she feels she doesn’t want to rake over these areas yet again. And the hugely supportive audience – who even laugh when she takes an innocuous swig of beer – don’t seem to notice, let alone mind, this superficiality.

For a while, it seems a wonder how Post attracted such hardcore fans, who are certainly not confined to the Sapphic sisterhood. She’s an accomplished raconteur, for sure, in the more formal vein of an after-dinner speaker rather than the rowdy stand-up arena - yet her tales mostly tend to mark her out as good, rather than great.

Tangential material about how she’s often mistaken for a bloke, or her childhood battle with weight (ending with the splendid conclusion ‘Nazis made me fat’) are engaging and entertaining, too, told with the conviction only experience brings.

But in the last third of the show, as she abandons the Utah premise altogether for a more general assault on all religion, does it become more obvious what the fuss is about. Here she is transformed into a woman with a passionate belief, an intelligent argument and the wit to make it funny. In this stirring, compelling diatribe, illustrated with toy bunnies, does she finally, and convincingly, prove herself a step ahead of the pack.

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Melbourne, April 2005