Guide to Sexual Misery

Wolfgang Weinberger’s Guide to Sexual Misery cuts a fine line between comedy and therapy. Weinberger, an Austrian version of Des O’Connor, investigates his audience’s sexual habits in an effort to encourage a culture of “sexual feedback.” The audience is divided by gender and herded into opposite sides of the seating before being subjected to awkward sexual questioning. Weinberger, to avoid non-responses, creates a system by which one hums an answer; Weinberger asks, "Have you ever faked an orgasm?" the girls hum, the boys stay quiet – cue laughter.

This potentially tedious interrogation is broken up by diagrams and statistics that aim to measure the audience’s degree of sexual misery. Orgasm pie-charts and sexual attraction tables transpire to mean very little, but genuinely interesting statistics do crop up: “on average it takes women seventeen minutes to orgasm and men only four.”

Weinberger’s performance is somewhat stilted, his cue cards visible and his gags a little hackneyed. Although his red-shirted, chirpy persona does a lot to keep the show afloat, it doesn’t make up for the lack of solid content. One can’t help but feel that the appeal of Guide to Sexual Misery lies in the innately entertaining topic of sex rather than in anything Weinberger offers. However, the audience split does create a giggly gender dynamic and Weinberger, with his Austrian candour, successfully defrosts a reticent British audience. This show probably won’t tell you anything new, but if you feel your sex life could benefit from a little comedic group therapy you should take a look.