By ALEXANDRA GILL - Saturday, June 28, 2003 - Print edition, Page R4

VANCOUVER -- Sadly, as is too often the case when amateurs take their first fumbling stabs at genital pleasuring, a controversial live-sex performance in Vancouver on Thursday turned out to be rather anticlimactic.

Yes, the double-ended oral sex act did take place. And the actors did rise to the occasion, quite literally in the case of Mr. Dana Williams. But to the dismay of the media circus that turned out for opening night (which nearly outnumbered the 35 spectators), the Vancouver Police Department did not bust the production, billed as Canada's first live oral sex show in an art gallery.

Public Sex, Art and Democracy made national headlines two weeks ago when John Ince, a civil-rights lawyer and owner of the erotic art store and gallery where the play was held, announced he was planning to stage a live sexual performance to accompany Labyrinth Soixante-Neuf, an exhibit of erotic drawings by Vancouver artist Martin Guderna.

A self-proclaimed erotic-arts activist, Ince said he was partly motivated by a desire to take an erotic interaction out of the "sleazy environments" it is so often associated with, and present it as an artistic pursuit, between a loving couple, in a pleasant setting.

Ince, however, is also a very talented self-promoter. And as a civil-rights sexual agitator who has successfully fought censorship cases in court before, he has admitted he was staging the play to challenge the ambiguity of Canadian obscenity laws. Saying he was prepared to fight any potential charges all the way to the Supreme Court, Ince was almost begging to be arrested.

Initially, city police shrugged the play off as a publicity stunt, saying they would not recommend charges be laid unless they received a complaint. They changed their position the next day.

On Thursday, police spokeswoman Sarah Bloor said that an investigation would take place if the actors went ahead with the sex act, more commonly known as position number 69.

Organizers set aside two seats for Vancouver police chief Jamie Graham and B.C. attorney-general Geoff Plant. Neither showed up, nor did any uniformed police officers. Rishi Gill, one of the lawyers for the play's producers, said if Crown counsel pressed charges, he would defend the show on the basis of its artistic merit.

Hmmm. If judged as theatre, this play was definitely a flop. But as a work of performance art, it certainly had its moments.

The first act starred Ince, as himself, being interviewed by a talk-show host about the controversy surrounding the play. The scene was intolerably boring.

After a 10-minute intermission, Tanya Seltenrich and Dana Williams walked out on stage, stark naked, and began kissing passionately. Before you knew it, Williams was lying on his back on a table. Then Seltenrich hopped up and mounted him upside down.

The mutual slurp fest carried on for a good five minutes, until Martin Guderna entered the stage with a spray bottle and began spritzing a white sheet hanging behind the couple. He then pulled out a tray of red paint and began rolling it over their locked bodies.

Guderna later draped the sheet over the actors, which soaked up the paint like a shroud. And for the next 20 minutes, he continued to attack his writhing project with flourished strokes, tender pats and much more spritzing. Wearing cowboy boots, a white shirt unbuttoned to his navel and a mane of wild hair, Guderna brought back memories of a young Warren Beatty in Shampoo.

The 30-minute act contained absolutely no dialogue, other than a few muffled moans under the sheet. But the audience, seated on plastic fold-up chairs amidst the display cases of pleasure toys, appeared to be mildly engrossed nonetheless, as they looked on with the detached expressions of a biology class.

When the show was finally over, the sweaty couple stumbled off stage and the painting was pinned up for display. With its smeared buttocks and frog limbs akimbo, the print had the primitive look of cave drawing.