Hot Pink Bits

BATS Theatre, Wellington

10/02/2007 - 14/02/2007

NZ Fringe Festival 2007

Production Details


Written & performed by Penny Ashton


Whatever happened to Divine Brown?  Can a phone sex operator get RSI? Do people really have sex through a pizza?  Frustrated you can’t look any of this up on your work computer?  Then Hot Pink Bits is the show for you.

That’s right everyone’s favourite dirty girl Penny Ashton is back, and in 2007 she’s naughtier than ever.   For her brand spanking new show Penny has trawled the ins and…outs of the international sex industry and will tell you all about the lives of the she’s, he’s, and she-males that make a living in the world’s oldest profession.

Resplendent in a hot pink corset, dripping in cheap jewelry and accompanied by Dwight the Ivory-tinkling Home-Schooled boy-Wonder, Ashton will sing, dance and pontificate on porn, prostitutes and Lockwood Smith in a burlesque-esque romp through the kickers of the global sex trade.  There’ll be a group orgasm, a live sex show, an audience gimp and a very sexy stripper.  Songs will be reinvented, fetishes will be indulged and Nana will need a lie down.  But of course it will all be done…in the best POSSIBLE taste.

Penny Ashton is New Zealand’s own global comedienne who has been making a splash on the world stage since 2002. She has two Billy T nominations, five Best Female Comedienne nominations and one Adelaide Fringe People’s Choice nomination.

One day she hopes to win something.

“…can’t fail on a stage in the English speaking world.” ««««  edinburghguide.com 2004

“…a potty mouthed Pam Ayres.” ««««  Metro Edinburgh 2005

“She was funny, charmingly friendly and warm……Pure class.”  Nelson Mail – September 2006

Ashton has performed all over New Zealand and in Canada, USA, Singapore, London, Australia, Germany and Scotland. In 2006, Penny represented New Zealand in The World Cup of Theatresports in Germany and Australasia in a Performance Poetry Slam Tournament Tour of the UK.  She is a regular on National Radio, Breakfast TV and at the bar.  She drinks sav blanc.

More of her global exploits and achievements can be read at http://www.hotpink.co.nz/  and www.myspace.com/hotpinkpennyashton.

Her HOT PINK BITS and other miscellaneous dates are as follows:

January 18th – 22nd as MC for the Late Night with the Buskers at the Loaded Hog, Cashel St, CHCH.

January 23rd – 27th HOT PINK BITS, Repertory Theatre, Kilmore St, CHCH, 9pm, Door Sales only

February 4th – 5th HOT PINK DOES ROTO-VEGAS, Rotorua Festival of the Arts

February 10th – 14th HOT PINK BITS, Wellington Fringe Festival, Bats Theatre, 8pm, Book on (04) 802 4175 or book@bats.co.nz



Theatre , Burlesque , Comedy , Solo ,


1 hr

The F word = Fun

Review by Michael Wray 14th Feb 2007

Penny Ashton’s show Hot Pink Bits is a whistle stop tour of life’s seedier aspects. From the (not so surprising) revelation that Google returns almost four times as many hits for sex as for world peace, to history lessons they did not teach at school, little ground is left uncovered.

Between musical renditions of songs like ‘Dirty Deeds’ (Done Dirt Cheap), we hear how man has reduced all forms of media to methods of self-titillation with ever-increasing rapidity. Internet porn is not a new concept; it’s just responds faster than older communication forms.

A pornographic pop quiz serves to entertain, not least when audience members resort to invention in response to tricky teasers. For the record, I won a $2 D-Vice voucher on one of the questions – a lucky guess… honest!

The show successfully treads the risqué line between what is funny and what could offend. Despite the adult themes, it is difficult to believe that anyone could take offence.

It’s a show that would be just as home in the comedy festival, resembling a relaxed stand-up routine at various times. Audience participation is sought and freely given, if a little reluctantly from the selected victims who soon warm up. Ashton works in a serious aside on the double standards applied between men and women on sex and in particular the world’s oldest profession, a point well made, but the focus of the show is definitely on the F word (fun, obviously). 

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Very very funny

Review by Ewen Coleman [Reproduced with permission of Fairfax Media] 12th Feb 2007

Another show in this year’s Fringe Festival with sex as its central theme is the one woman comedy Hot Pink Bits currently playing at BATS.  Written and performed by ex Royal NZ Ballet dancer turned comedienne Penny Ashton, this slick, polished and very confidently performed show takes an irreverent look at many aspects of sex that is far from dirty and very very funny. 

This is not so much a how we do it or don’t do it show but a quirky and fascinating look at the many things associated with sex like fetishes, prostitution and pornography.  She has researched the Internet extensively – when you Google search sex she tells us and you get 633 million hits, when you search world peace you only get 144 hits – and has come up with copious facts and figures that she has weaved into a very entertaining show. 

Numerous well known songs such as A Few Of My Favourite Things are appropriately rewritten and compliment the spoken dialogue well. Audience members are also involved in many parts of the show often with hilarious consequences.  It is just a pity that Ashton is only assigned a 5 night season as this highly professional show deserves a much longer run.

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