JULY 17
It's all about guts

Why is it that when you are single there are kissing, groping exceedingly happy couples where ever you go? In the park, outside the office and the most awful place of all on the tube in a confined tight hot little space. There is no escaping them and the fact that they have an audience makes it all the more thrilling. Yesterday I went to a little theatre in the back end of nowhere to see a show, which the press release told me would be a playful tale of sexual social conditioning.

Now on the outset this sounds intriguing, but I want to make a comment this week about commitment; commitment to a show, a cause, or even a just a scene. If you chose to present something before an audience, give it 100%. If you chose to put on a show about sex ensure that you fully commit to the result.

A number of years ago I saw a production in Sydney at the Enmore Theatre called XXX, which was in the simplest sense really just, porn on stage. Naked men and women frolicked, champagne, cream, and all manner of objects were sprayed, splashed and writhed in at various points, plastic sheeting was laid down to protect the stage, and a giant swing made an appearance. That just names a few of the elements that I can remember from this theatrical sexual awakening. At the time I thought this show is rubbish. Why would you choose to put something like this on? It is pornographic bullshit I thought. However my opinion of the show has changed slightly after seeing this show last night.

In the case of this company, they decided that in order to send their audience into shock and awe it would be a great idea to put on a production about the British sensibilities towards sex. Now this to me sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea for a show, but only, if you go all the way so to speak. This cannot be half hearted.

A man wears a dress pretending to be a woman on purpose. He is not a transvestite, but rather he is actually a man, acting the role of a woman. A school girl is seduced by her professor and raped by his friend, with a scene taken directly out of recent film. The refusal of this cast to even remotely remove their clothes in any particular way for a show about sex baffles me. Now I understand the importance of illusion in theatre and that you cannot always go full on out and actually have sex on stage. Simulation is needed. However there is no need to wear nude stockings, underwear, pose as a baby, have a nappy applied and then simulate extreme sex with a man posing as a woman. Now there is an amount of suspended disbelief in theatre, that is a given, but no one can be expected to believe the intention of two characters having sex is actually happening if you are both fully clothed and one of you, the one penetrating, is actually wearing a nappy. I am this week incensed and saddened, that a show of this calibre is actually making a trip up to Edinburgh for a 3 week season. I am sad for the performers, because Edinburgh is a snake pit for shows like this and in its current state, this piece will be eaten alive and spat out the other end.

It is interesting that a show, in this case the one I saw yesterday, can, years later affect your perspective on another show that you saw five years before. XXX, for all its faults gave 100% commitment to the material it presented. If the show I saw last night had even had half their guts, the material they presented would have seemed interesting and worthy of recommendation. Maybe they can save it before their season with the big guns? I hope so. If Equus and The Blue Room can do it on the West End, a tiny fringe production playing to 5 audience members can!


Read Last Week's West End Whispers