Cactus - The Seduction

In a room not dissimilar to a lecture theatre, Jonno Katz begins his one-man show Cactus - The Seduction with an English lesson, or more accurately, a short course in New Zealand slang. “Rooting”, “doubling” and “dinks” explained, the fun really begins when Katz unzips his shirt to become Phil, a man so desperate to find love he has followed his lonely heart into the desert – "where no one else is looking," he rationalises.

And so it goes, with Katz not only switching scenes at lightning speed with only his zipper guiding us in and out of locations, but also along the way switching characters within locations and switching characters within the memories and dreams of each of those previous characters. In short, Cactus is a lot to follow. But so skilled is the way in which Katz’s transforms from man to other man to woman to insect that we are not left behind for a second. Relentlessly, we are swept along on the wave of Katz’s infectious energy, getting laughs out of his unexpected eye-twitches and even silly dancing in the memorable scene, 'I Just Can’t Get Enough'.

But for all the crowd-pleasing, a couple of the cruder sex gags fall flat and it is when the performance resorts to the smutty that it is at its weakest. Katz’s charm lies instead in the moments of reflection that follow scenes of relived humiliation at the hands of prospective lovers and his musings on the greater philosophical significance of his efforts.