Body Count ★★★★

This Pollie wants more than a cracker. Much more.

At the start of writer-actor Issy Knowles’ solo show Body Count, Pollie strides through the audience declaring, “This is all for you,” before adding, “I like it rough.” It’s an appropriately provocative opening for a play about an OnlyFans star attempting to sleep with 1,000 of her subscribers in a single marathon session. But what quickly becomes clear is that Knowles’ real feat isn’t pantomimed sexual stamina — it’s extraordinary stage craft. Her ability to switch characters on a dime is enthralling, and with little more than a shift in posture or accent she conjures an entire gallery of admirers, hangers-on, and incels.

Once Knowles steps on stage — empty except for a double bed fitted with a pink waterproof sheet — the play moves back and forth between the encounters that make up Pollie’s sex marathon and memories of her earlier, less carnal life. We hear about an upbringing steeped in Catholicism and an unfortunate but comical-in-retrospect first sexual experience at 15, at a multi-day outdoor music festival (“Zach told me he was a feminist, and he had nail polish on so I knew it must be true”), moments that help explain how this unlikely but perhaps inevitable lucrative career path came to be. Pollie makes it clear she feels no shame, even making an intriguing comparison between her chosen profession and that of a factory worker who wears down his body over decades for minimum wage — reminding us that physical labor, whether sexual or industrial, has always carried its own costs.

The premise carries obvious thematic weight. Body Count gestures toward the dangers surrounding sex work but is far more interested in theatrical bravura. The program notes emphasize the violence frequently faced by women in sex work, but the play itself barely touches on the subject until the very end, and even then only briefly.

There’s also a small miscalculation in the staging. Audience members are invited to wear blue balaclavas, turning them into anonymous participants in Pollie’s stunt, and Knowles acknowledges that we’re all in New York. The gesture is meant to heighten immediacy, but it clashes with the show’s distinctly British sensibility. The characters Knowles portrays so skillfully feel rooted in the UK, and relocating the action across the Atlantic muddies the illusion more than it sharpens it.

Still, there’s no denying Knowles’ talent. The performance is brave, funny, and impressively controlled, with Knowles displaying a lovely sense of humor even when the script sidesteps the deeper questions it raises.