The trouble with sex and the stage
Does a surfeit of sex in a small theatre turn the audience into unwilling shabby raincoat voyeurs?
The ructions about the sexual harassment of performers set me wondering, while watching this play, about actors who don’t want to do nudity or sex scenes on stage, quite apart from off-stage groping and worse. Of course, actors can just say they don’t do explicit sex and somebody less inhibited gets the role. But if you say ‘no’ today, you’ll probably be out of the running for parts you want later. And on the stage, a great deal depends on the sensitivity of the director if explicit scenes are not to become part of the exploitation process.
But the main problem I find with onstage nudity, is that it takes the attention away from the character and puts it back on the physical attributes or peculiarities of the performer. Paul Livingstone, without even the cover of muted lighting, has to spend a lot of time in Dennis Kelly’s play, After The End, looking pretty uncomfortable. In last year’s Abbey production of Ulysses, David Pearse, fully clothed, performed the Leopold Bloom masturbation scene, like an all-guns-blazing celebrity cameo.
But Kelly’s play is a deeply disturbing story about sexual obsession, inadequacy, exploitation and morality under stress.
It’s also similar to the John Fowles novel, The Collector, filmed in 1963 with Samantha Eggar and Terence Stamp. Socialite Louise wakes up to find she’s been rescued by Mark from what he describes as a major bomb attack. They’re in a deep shelter, obviously well prepared in advance for such an episode. Louise is not allowed explore above ground. She’s clearly the prisoner of a dedicated, immature, paranoid fantasist. And the story evolves into deeply uncomfortable territory as the two clash verbally and physically, sparring over real and imagined insults.
Mark (Paul Livingstone) does a vigorous self-arousing sexual stint twice, but with a serious grimace, to show he’s not getting anywhere. Later there are various forms of rape and an attempted castration. Family viewing it’s not.
In the confines of a small theatre it all gave me the creepy feeling that the audience was being turned into a bunch of shabby-raincoat-wearingvoyeurs. Director Emily Foran manages to keep the claustrophobic atmosphere intact and there’s a very well-executed escape attempt, although it, and a subsequent castration effort, were not convincing in the absence of a gun.
Livingstone takes all the opportunities presented by the mercurially odd Mark, and Maria Guiver complements him well as the more cerebral and vivacious Louise. But the publicity that sees the play as remarkably ‘relevant in the wake of Trump and Brexit’ is itself a bit too much like a Trump tweet.
‘The story evolves into uncomfortable territory as the two clash verbally and physically’