Porn Play (Royal Court Theatre, London)
Verdict: Paradise lost
Rating (4 STARS)
Sophia Chitin-Leuner’s unsettling new play about porn is a ground-breaker — not least because it dares to be funny, as well as deeply disturbing. Even before it begins, the audience are issued with shoe-covers, so as not to leave grubby footprints as we clamber onto the squishy beige banks of seating.
The intimate space Upstairs at the Royal Court has been transformed, so it resembles the contours of a body, sloping down to an empty oval pit. All very flesh-like; all very female.
When props — clothes, laptops, duvets, a medical table and (hilariously) an endless roll of medical paper — are pulled, like secrets, from crevices and seams, the space becomes a bedroom, a doctor’s room, an office.
At the centre of director Josie Rourke’s cleverly restrained yet suggestive production is Ambika Mod (best known as sweet, doomed Emma in One Day).
She plays Ani, a super-articulate academic — an expert on Milton, author of Paradise Lost — who is celebrating her latest award with her boyfriend, over a sumptuous Adam and Eve-appropriate pudding of apple pie.
Sophia Chitin-Leuner’s unsettling new play about porn is a ground-breaker — not least because it dares to be funny, as well as deeply disturbing; pictured Ambika Mod
At the centre of director Josie Rourke’s cleverly restrained yet suggestive production is One Day’s Ambika Mod, who plays Ani, a super-articulate academic
And so to bed, where Liam (Will Close) complains that she is more interested in pleasuring herself, while looking at violent porn, than she is in him
And so to bed, where Liam (Will Close) complains that she is more interested in pleasuring herself, while looking at violent porn, than she is in him.
And while she argues that it helps her unwind, requires less ‘work’ and, moreover ‘isn’t real’, she knows there’s something wrong. And there is. Because, like a junkie or an alcoholic, what began as a bit of experimental fun has become a compulsive, uncontrollable urge; in spite of the relationships sabotaged — when she is caught by her dad, and her best friend — and the damage she has evidently done to herself (physical and psychological).
Ani can no longer live in the moment. Even in the most public, inappropriate places, she is reaching for her phone, her hand down her trousers.
Much worse, she wants to do this stuff — and have it done to her.
In a truly horrifying scene, she gets a younger male student to tie her up, blindfold her and ‘do anything he wants with her’.
He reaches for his metal bike lock.
Mod’s performance is astonishing. Initially animated, sparkling, open, beautiful, she becomes increasingly haunted, dead behind the eyes and, yes, pathetic.
Important, uncomfortable theatre, brilliantly shining light into a very dark place.
Porn Play runs Upstairs at the Royal Court until December 13.
