The poster and flyers gave away very little about the show, other than t it was to be presented by a Doctor Hank Shankman, presumably some wacky public school rich kid, who would spend the next hour laughing at knobs and fannies and encouraging the audience to divulge wildly intimate details of their private lives. Surprisingly, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
The so-called Dr. Shankman is a rather unassuming middle aged gentleman, who also sings with a country and western band.
After plugging his debut album, he gets down to business, so to speak, and begins our therapy, which, as well as being mildly amusing, offer some seemingly genuine advice on sexual practice and our attitudes towards the opposite sex. Good dialogue is a key to all relationship and the good Doctor takes every opportunity to interact with the audience, but avoids singling out dysfunction by getting his answers en masse.
Dr Shankman pleasantly contradicts expectations and falls short of the predicted smut level (his diagrams don’t even contain one amusing willy),but you can’t help but feel he’s taking everything a little too seriously. His gentle humour captures the audience, despite not being a laugh a minute type stuff, but you are left feeling unsure if you’ve just had a therapy session or been to a show. In reality it’s some sort of hybrid – not 100% sex therapy, but 75% therapy, 20% comedy and 5% frustrated country and western singer looking to branch out.
3/5
Becky Stone
