‘Flickery: The Art of Female Pleasure’ is an entertaining mix of musical comedy, hen party, and the sex education class that Australian girls should get but don’t. Plus a splash of old-style burlesque.

‘Flickery’ is local writer Sally Newman’s name for female masturbation (as the performers point out, there’s no shortage of terms for male masturbation), and for all the innuendo, games, faked orgasms and laughter, it treats the subject as something worthy of being taken seriously.

The lead performers were the franglais-speaking Madame Lush and the entertainingly educational ingenue Miss Webster. Appropriately, women outnumbered the man on stage by five to one, and in the audience when I saw it on opening night (no pun intended), by more than ten to one.

However, the men present were never made to feel uncomfortable, were given some opportunities for audience participation (though I didn’t notice any of them making any noise during the poll on the most popular sex toys), and seemed to laugh and applaud just as much as the women. On occasions, there was so much stamping of feet that I suspect some of the audience felt the Earth move.

There’s some mild nudity, occasional coarse language, and sexual references galore, but no touching allowed (of the performers, yourself, or other audience members). There was no sign language interpreter on the night I saw the show (perhaps fortunately), but plenty of visual humour – some of it so quick that if you blink you’ll miss it, and none of it obviously intended for the male gaze.

If you’re offended by the theme of the show, then by all means stay away. But even if you think you already know all you need to know about the subject, come along for a riotously raunchy hour of adult fun and maybe the Earth will move for you, too.