The title of this work pulls no punches, and neither does the show. Opening at BATS Propeller Stage, Phone Whore comes highly recommended by many reviewers. It has been described as “brutal, piercing, thought-provoking”.

My first unease is with a performer who schmoozes audience members before the performance begins. “How did you hear about the show?” she wants to know, plumping herself down beside someone next to me.  

A shrill telephone ring summons American Cameryn Moore to the stage, and we are in for a full-on revelation of what takes place between the phone whore of the title and her clients. 

My next misgiving is with the blatant lies a phone whore can get away with that a prostitute can’t – what she looks like, what she’s wearing. The client on the phone can’t see who’s talking to him. A prostitute, face to face with a customer, enjoys no such luxury. Moore, nothing like the description she gives of herself, clearly has no qualms in presenting us with this. 

Which brings me to my third point of unease. A performance of this kind relies for its success on gaining the complicity of the audience with the content of the show. And the content here is undeniably ugly. It’s based on falseness and lying. I’m wondering if the audience shares my discomfort, as well as my distaste. 

Moore pays lip service to my concern in her ruminations between clients. “I’m just another sex toy,” she says. “I’ve got a stable of regulars.” 

I’m wondering if we’ll catch a glimpse of vulnerability; of warmth, compassion, genuine humour. And I’m thinking of a possible comparison with last year’s Fringe show Paying for It, which featured sex workers relating accounts of their activities. That and Paying for It II were runaway successes: funny, sometimes rueful, and heart-warming.

We get a little closer to where our performer may be at when she laments that she’s only got seven minutes to give the client what he wants. She sees herself as a kind of safety valve. “It’s behaviour that’s the problem.”

Descriptions of her conversations, and her vocabulary, get lewder and more lurid. A woman in the audience walks out. We hear about a child encouraged to indulge in sexual behaviour with her father. A man walks out.

This is not a show for the faint-hearted, nor for those with finer feelings.

It’s difficult to separate the performer of this piece from the role she plays.

“I’m proud of doing something other people haven’t the stomach for,” says Moore, in her persona as phone whore.  

That’s a comment that could apply equally to her as a performer as well as the sex worker she embodies.

Whether that’s praise or not I leave for the reader to decide. 

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