1,245 posts
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Post by joem on Apr 29, 2018 19:05:43 GMT
First production in thirty-five years of Sarah Daniels play about the influence pornography has on violence on women and rape.
Starts off promisingly with some sharp dialogue and good scenes, setting the agenda through the eyes of different characters, in particular a family featuring a rather distant mum, stepdad, daughter and her husband, plus daughter's best friend and her husband. Conveniently we have within this extended family a teacher who is appalled at the pornography her teenage pupils are seeing (effectively girlie magazines, the rowing boats to today's nuclear submarines of porn flourishing on the net), a social worker, a fatuous bore and a would-be rapist. Plus the George and Mildred redux team which the older couple forms.
Sadly the second half deteriorates into an amorphous rant against masculinity in general with narrative gems such as one of the characters being distraught after watching a snuff movie at a cinema. Wonder which cinema Ms Daniels had in mind?
Not hard to see why this has not been revived. It manages to be both dated and incredible - in the wrong sense of the word.
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923 posts
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Post by Snciole on Apr 30, 2018 16:40:17 GMT
I thought this was a mess *Snciole plugs her blog klaxon* viewfromthecheapseat.com/2018/04/27/masterpieces-finborough-theatre/Daniels is a good writer but these were three separate plays thrown together to pad out the limited ideas she had. Is it about pornography? Is it about the class divide in Thatcher's Britain? Is it about violence. Daniels just doesn't have a clue, the non linear scenes are a terrible idea and crucially despite being a two hour play we often see flashbacks to events that have been described much better. As a production it needs some major cuts but the truth is this should be a timely reminder of what the internet did to the 70/80s generation of porn users but instead it is a dated, messy and often judgemental look at society.
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3,303 posts
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Post by david on May 6, 2018 16:46:55 GMT
I saw this at today’s matinee and overall I thought it wasn’t too bad. As others have posted there was some great and at times very brutal and honest dialogue about the treatment of women, as well as some great comedic moments, particularly in the second Act between the mum and the step dad with their argument about their marriage. Also, who would ever have thought the Coca Cola would be more than a drink as described in the monologue from the Hilary character!
Though as Theatre Monkey has mentioned, it is the standout performances from the 6 cast members which I thought were terrific that I will take away from this production.
Also loved the 80’s musical interludes between the scenes!
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