THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
A new play from Terry Johnson is always something to cherish. After a string of West End hits and TV films he's one of Britain's great comic talents both as a writer and director.
For his new play he has bravely/foolishly (delete as appropriate) taken on the culture wars over gender identity and he does so, using his preferred genre, the sex comedy. Trouble is he sets it in that bastion of "heteronormativity" – the swingers party.
The result is two acts that are really two different plays. Set in the kitchen of the stylish Islington home of sex party hosts Alex (Jason Merrells) and Hetty (Molly Osborne), Act 1 is a real case of "noises off". We're in the kitchen while the orgy is off stage in the living room and the protagonists wander to and fro. The first hour (it feels longer) recalls a rather conventional Ayckbourn comedy. We're introduced to a quartet of very different couples, gently bickering, and it feels like we're being set up for the for typical second act where, in the light of the jealousies unleashed at the orgy, the couples relationships will inevitably unravel.
But then in Act 2, there's a 'Deus ex Machina' moment, as a trans woman Lucy (the slyly charismatic Pooya Mohseni) arrives late to the party. Her cool, mysterious, demeanour discombobulates the gathering and we're suddenly into a different play - a rather polemical discourse on gender ideology where we're all taught to have the right opinions. What a party pooper that turns out to be.
Lucy is set up as some sort of font of wisdom (recalls too much the trope of the wise old hooker or drag queen) and the brash American alpha male guest Jeff (Oscar winner Timothy Hutton in his London debut) plays the nasty "cis male" who challenges her. Straw man arguments are then set up and it's all stacked in favour of Lucy, egged on by the painfully pious Camilla (Kelly Price) "who believes passionately in inclusivity". At one point Alex exclaims: "Can we please change the subject" and we feel his pain.
Three quarters of the way through Johnson realises his farce has stalled and he has them all bustle back from the orgy and immediately start bickering and going on about consent, all set off by Camilla's furious cry of "He sucked her co*k". She's referring to her dozy husband Tim, (the impishly droll Will Barton), who, ironically, is more interested in scoring a drug fix than making out. Suddenly Camilla is no longer in Lucy's corner.
Johnson is good at puncturing such hypocrisy, but the piece suffers from a surfeit of characters who are not explored fully enough in Act 1 for us to get the pay off in Act 2. Notwithstanding the minefield of sexual politics here, there are gaping inconsistencies; the perfect Lucy tells of her imminent surgery to fully transition, which of course makes her very atypical nowadays, and undercuts earlier arguments.
Directing your own play can often be problematic for a writer and here Johnson could probably have benefited from another perspective. He does however elicit some great performances. Lisa Dwan (the current queen of Beckett performances) is a powerfully sensual presence as Gilly, the frustrated wife of Jake who still holds a candle for Alex. John Hopkins is great as the very square Jake, who, one suspects, would rather be at home watching a game. Amanda Ryan has a scene stealing turn as Magdalena, a sexually ravenous Russian, locked into a miserable marriage of convenience with Jeff, but it is all uneasily pitched. Finally, if there's an Olivier award for most aspirational kitchen, it has to go to designer Tim Shortall for his great work.
