Review: Pornography

It quite literally went out with a bang!


For Pornography, The Barron Theatre was set in the round. The floor was covered with a map of the London underground and a series of photographs of quotidian life hung from the ceiling. The setting was London but the actors were notably nowhere to be seen. As the theatre was ignited with the background noises of the tube, from the audience eight actors stood up and swapped places, with one taking centre stage. This would be the recurring narrative device throughout the play, a play about solitude and being contained within a certain way of life. For a play in which its characters had become engulfed by the city of London, forgotten amongst the bustling crowds, this reconstruction of a tube carriage aesthetically encapsulated its central premise.

All seven narrative vignettes were loosely based around the build up to the 7/7 bombings, addressing the Live 8 concerts and the 2012 Olympic announcements along the way. The play had six individual stories to tell, but interspersed between each scene was a newsreel announcement. These were a tribute to the lost but also, in their anonymity, added to the continuing depersonalisation of the city. The first two narrative vignettes were the weakest, but this was in part a reflection of the source material. Nevertheless, whilst Peter Swallow’s portrayal did contain some conviction, its accuracy missed the mark. Ultimately, the problem was that these tales of an adolescent psychopath and a doomed love-affair between incestuous siblings simply weren’t as entertaining as their descriptions suggest.

The play’s momentary lapse in momentum was resurrected by the transformative performance of Suzanna Swanson-Johnston, who gave a portrayal as remarkable as her name would indicate. Her octogenarian, ostracised widow inspired rapturous laughter whilst simultaneously conveying the genuine anguish of her character’s isolation. The superior duologue of the play took place between Ebenezer Bamgboye and Sophie Samuda, portraying the reunion of an academic and his former pupil. Playing an older man, Bamgboye captured a sense of sincere maturity; wonderfully mingling his awkward attempts at seduction with apprehension and melancholy. The challenging event that inevitably unfolds from his interaction with Samuda could have regressed into melodrama but instead became an astute performance capturing both betrayal and regret.

From a series of static performances, mostly consisting of monologues, the cast’s quality and Bowman’s swift direction provided many scenes with vitality, immersing the audience into the action as they sat amongst us. The narrative ultimately very much mirrored the play’s title, expressing a series of figures seeking unconventional means to artificially compensate for a lack of human affection. I fear I haven’t left much to say about the remaining two vignettes, which depicted a woman attempting to carry on once the euphoria of pregnancy had come to an end, and the last unnamed character: the bomber, who was played relatively well by Angus Russell. If you attended the play, you will know what I mean when I say that it quite literally went out with a bang. The narrative came to its destructive conclusion with a slamming door standing in for the bang.

Photo courtesy of Katie Brennan