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Showing posts with label Florence Roberts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Florence Roberts. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
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Just how important is sex anyway? The various ramifications of gettin' on it bubble away throughout Sarah Page's Punts, plunging into a rather sticky mire of consent, class, morality and gender.
At the core of the show is Jack (Christopher Adams) a 25-year-old with a learning disability. A brief period of oxygen deprivation in utero has left him painfully shy, awkward and nervous, a man treated with sympathy and wholly reliant on his parents Antonia (Clare Lawrence-Moody) and Alastair (Graham O'Mara). He's grown up watching his neurotypical younger brothers ride the rollercoaster of adolescent fumblings and subsequent heartbreak, yet seems resigned to being a mere spectator in intimacy.
Recognising this, his parents decide the best course of action is to book him a couple of hours with a sex worker, hoping that popping his cherry will loosen Jack up a bit and give him the confidence he needs to approach women. After extensive online research they pick Kitty (Florence Roberts), a confident, intelligent and extremely sexy woman who particularly empathises with disabled clients.
The appointment ends up having serious repercussions for all the characters, rippling outwards through their lives in unpredictable (but dramatically fertile) ways. Perhaps most interesting is when the characters are arguing over whether a man with a learning disability can consent to sex. In Punts this hinges on what Jack believes sex to be: the sweaty pumping in pornography and the laddish banter down at the rugby club, or a way to emotionally connect with another human being.
On top of that, his vision of sex is clouded by his parents' behaviour towards him. They're theoretically sex positive in a painfully British middle-class sort of way, dutifully providing their son with 'female-friendly' porn to watch yet balking at the idea of actually defining things like anal sex and cunnilingus. Beyond Jacks's personal experience, there's the uneasy sense that his parents are desperate for Jack to be as normal as possible, chiselling away at him according to their concept of masculinity.
We also examine femininity through Kitty (Julia in her off hours), who is happy, relaxed and sex positive, explaining "being a sex worker empowers me". She's pressed on this, asked "How about when some fat stranger is ejaculating on your face? You feel empowered then? ... How about when you're rimming some sweaty old man?" She responds: "ESPECIALLY then." For Julia, the work allows her independence and freedom, something Page slyly contrasts with the bondage of housewifery.
Sarah Page clearly isn't afraid of tackling some deeply slippery topics, piling into them with wit and energy. There's a core of intelligence and thoughtfulness running right through the play, presenting with a sexual battleground where class, education and privilege are weaponised.
It's also a damn entertaining and funny piece of writing, speckled with well-timed lines that have the audience rolling. The interpersonal drama is also compelling, largely down to a quartet of obviously committed performers. The standout among them is Christopher Adams: playing a man with mental disabilities is a tricky proposition and runs the risk of derailing into stereotypes. In Adams' hands, Jack isn't 'just' a disability, he's a character with a fully formed personality and recognisable tics.
My only slight nitpick is the staging. Amelia Jane Hankin's set is undeniably stylish - a glowing minimalist skeleton that throbs to the beat of the interstitial dance music. Yet the club aesthetic feels at odds with the naturalistic domesticity of the writing. I'd have liked to have seen a set that contributed to the characterisation. What are the posters in Jack's bedroom? What chintzy bourgeois knick-knacks dot the family kitchen? How does Kitty's sexualised presence contrast with the home she's visiting?
But this is a pretty small fly in a tub of very nice ointment. I generally hold Theatre503 to a higher standard than most fringe theatres - they've got ambition, they've got style and they've got enviable taste in picking plays to stage (they also have new seats, which is a godsend for the arse). Punts fit right in with what the place is about: an incisive, confidently written and bold piece of drama.
Punts is at Theatre503 Wednesday 31st May – Saturday 24th June, 7.45pm (Wed. & Sat. Matinee, 3pm). Tickets here.
We also examine femininity through Kitty (Julia in her off hours), who is happy, relaxed and sex positive, explaining "being a sex worker empowers me". She's pressed on this, asked "How about when some fat stranger is ejaculating on your face? You feel empowered then? ... How about when you're rimming some sweaty old man?" She responds: "ESPECIALLY then." For Julia, the work allows her independence and freedom, something Page slyly contrasts with the bondage of housewifery.
Sarah Page clearly isn't afraid of tackling some deeply slippery topics, piling into them with wit and energy. There's a core of intelligence and thoughtfulness running right through the play, presenting with a sexual battleground where class, education and privilege are weaponised.
It's also a damn entertaining and funny piece of writing, speckled with well-timed lines that have the audience rolling. The interpersonal drama is also compelling, largely down to a quartet of obviously committed performers. The standout among them is Christopher Adams: playing a man with mental disabilities is a tricky proposition and runs the risk of derailing into stereotypes. In Adams' hands, Jack isn't 'just' a disability, he's a character with a fully formed personality and recognisable tics.
My only slight nitpick is the staging. Amelia Jane Hankin's set is undeniably stylish - a glowing minimalist skeleton that throbs to the beat of the interstitial dance music. Yet the club aesthetic feels at odds with the naturalistic domesticity of the writing. I'd have liked to have seen a set that contributed to the characterisation. What are the posters in Jack's bedroom? What chintzy bourgeois knick-knacks dot the family kitchen? How does Kitty's sexualised presence contrast with the home she's visiting?
But this is a pretty small fly in a tub of very nice ointment. I generally hold Theatre503 to a higher standard than most fringe theatres - they've got ambition, they've got style and they've got enviable taste in picking plays to stage (they also have new seats, which is a godsend for the arse). Punts fit right in with what the place is about: an incisive, confidently written and bold piece of drama.
Punts is at Theatre503 Wednesday 31st May – Saturday 24th June, 7.45pm (Wed. & Sat. Matinee, 3pm). Tickets here.
Monday, March 21, 2016
Monday, March 21, 2016
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Grandiose apocalyptic disaster used to feel like the stuff of fiction. Now, 15 years on from the Roland Emmerich nightmare theatre of 9/11, it feels increasingly like we're living in a bad disaster film. As atrocities tick by like clockwork; the carnage begins to seem less like an aberration and more like an inevitability. This is the meat of Stuart Slade's BU21, which explores the psychological impact of a jumbo jet being shot down over London by terrorists.
Primarily inspired by the 2014 MH17 crash over the Ukraine, spliced with 9/11 and 7/7 DNA, the play is set in a support group and follows six young Londoners as they struggle to cope with the magnitude of their experiences. Each has their own horror story: bubbly student Floss witnesses a passenger plummet into her back garden from 4500 feet; office worker Thalissa's mother is bisected by a jet engine; banker Alex's home, best friend and girlfriend are reduced to ash; and Ana, a young Romanian, suffers horrible full-body burns.
Sounds like a downer right? Well, it often is. BU21 is studded with grief, betrayal, misery, deformity and trauma - not quite a recipe for a delightful night out in the theatre. Fortunately (and kinda miraculously), BU21 is serious and moving, yet also absolutely hilarious. The ability to combine comedy and tragedy so deftly is an envious skill for a playwright to possess; one Slade previously deployed so thrillingly in 2014's Cans, which dealt with British celebrity paedophilia.
For my money BU21 succeeds because, above all else, it's honest. Slade's characters are all flawed; most at least somewhat unlikeable before metal, fire and corpses rain into their lives. Experiencing brainmelting tragedy does not miraculously transform people into saints; for example, Alex is an arsehole before the disaster and remains an arsehole after it, albeit one with deep mental scars. Eventually, the character's vanity and propensity for tasteless jokes (Floss can't help but think "It's raining men!" upon seeing a passenger crater into her lawn) function as a way to up the contrast - the presence of light making the darks feel so much darker.
Slade also frequently breaks the fourth wall, at one point berating the audience: "As far as I can tell this is essentially a financial exchange where you've paid money to be entertained by a bunch of human suffering - which - if you think about it, is kind of weird." It's a well he returns to time and again; his characters commenting on the play's dramatic structure; conversing with (and insulting!) the audience; and generally fostering an awkwardly adversarial relationship between audience and performers.
Theoretically, if you're trying to sincerely analyse tragedy the last thing you want to do is futz around with metatextual diversions. Yet, again, Slade pulls it off. What happens is that the fourth wall busting accentuated the honesty of the characters; their asides are tinged of verisimilitude and gradually draw the audience into a conspiratorial frame of mind. Characters and audience end up examining events from precisely the same place, the alignment making the big emotional moments a straight-up slam dunk.
And, of course, we're in Theatre503, so the actors are the best in town. Perhaps it goes without saying at this point, but when it comes to straightforwardly talented performers, this particular theatre rarely (if ever) puts a foot wrong. The entire cast, Alex Forsyth, Roxana Lupu, Clive Keene, Florence Roberts, Graham O'Mara and Thalissa Teixera, are all worthy of the highest praise.
Personal highlights were Graham O'Mara; whose frazzled self confidence gradually erodes over the course of the evening. There's an almost imperceptible dramatic shift in the character, beginning from surefooted forthrightness and ending at faking surefooted forthrightness. Technically there's a fag paper's thickness between the two states, but O'Mara carefully and recognisably distinguishes between them.
Somewhat more unsubtle is Alex Forsyth's preeningly hedonistic banker. With one foot in and one foot out of the fiction he's a kind of ersatz compere. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment is making this openly manipulative, misogynist, rapaciously capitalistic sleazebag somehow likeable. God only knows what kind of weird alchemy Forsyth is working with to make us like him (I suspect brute force charisma?) but it works, and the performances provides an acerbic, bristly heart to the piece.
After a streamlined hour and a half we're done, Slade having constructed an equall parts intellectual and emotional thought experiment into how exposure to atrocity affects the soul. Though brief, the ground covered is exhaustive, touching on questions of belief, community, class and politics - all with a touch so light it's easy to miss just how damn rigorous Slade is being. It's a fantastic show and one that deserves to be seen.
So see it!
★★★★
BU21 is at Theatre503 until 9th April. Tickets here.
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