Did I begrudge Bernie Dieter for singling out my boyfriend and asking him to ‘LICK MY PUSSY!’? In melodic and orgasmic falsetto? Over and over to explosive rock while looking him dead in the eye?

I did not. I adored her for it.

Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabarett. Image © Johannes Reinhart.

Because that’s what you can’t help but do, with a show like this. Adore it. A transcendently titillating, bawdy and big-hearted celebration of the sexual and the sensual, a joyous carnivale of carnality and cheek, you can’t help but surrender. Even those prudes with a stick up their ass will, by the end, begin to reconsider that stick as a potential source of pleasure.

In the fabled Famous Spiegeltent, conjured to The Rocks for Sydney Fringe and pulsating with lust, lights and live music, your gaze continually falls onto the upturned faces of other ticketed voyeurs encircling the centre stage. Each time mine did, I saw people who were so beautifully unguarded in their love for this international pleasure-house of fun. Together – and only hours after the NSW government had announced dancing was back on from midnight – we were feeling...