Brighton Year-Round 2023
NSFW
New Venture Theatre, Brighton
Genre: Contemporary, Dark Comedy, Drama, Satire, Theatre
Venue: New Venture Theatre Studio and Upstairs
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
A stunning vindication of an underrated early play of Lucy Kirkwood’s. With superb direction and tech, the mostly professional and professionally-trained cast would grace any stage. NVT triumphantly prove NSFW can join the modern canon.
Lucy Kirkwood’s 2012 NSFW is directed by Kirsty Elmer, Set and Costume Design Kirsty Elmer, Production Manager Apollo Videaux, Technical Lead Apollo Videaux
Lighting Design Apollo Videaux, and Sound Design Apollo Videaux & Kirsty Elmer, Sound Operation Oscar Bussell
Set Build Lead John Everett, Set Construction George Walter, Simon Glazier, Laura Colamonaco, Steve Hutton, Jean Parker, Fiona Hewitt, Props Kirsty Elmer, Katie Brownings, Tim Harbridge, John Everett, Miles Jefcoate, James Bennison, Goldie Majtas. Artwork Miles Jefcoate, Apollo Videaux, Multimedia Apollo Videaux, Publicity and Marketing Emmie Spencer,
Stage Manager Katie Brownings, ASM Karthik Peddiraju, Technicians Margot Kafka, William Neal
Poster Tamsin Mastoris, Programme Miles Jefcoate, Health and Safety Ian Black.
Till July 29th
Review
Not a tractor in sight. But 2012 wasn’t quite pixellated enough for smartphone porn in the Commons. Otherwise what’s changed since Lucy Kirkwood’s NSFW (Not Safe For Work) revived here by Kirsty Elmer at the New Venture Theatre? And it is a revival. I know of no visible production since its Royal Court premiere.
NSFW came before Kirkwood’s breakthrough Chimerica the next year, followed by The Children (2016), Mosquitoes (2017), The Welkin (2020) and Rapture (2022). Kirkwood’s easily one of our greatest living playwrights.
Finally seeing NSFW, as opposed to reading it has convinced me of two things. It’s a finer play than people thought. And surprisingly shows inspiration from Mike Bartlett that should have been obvious. Kirkwood more than repays the debt and does something rather more interesting than simply cornering a person and crushing them. Twice.
Aidan (Thomas Dee) runs Doghouse, an 18-30 male sex-and-lifestyle mag in a joshing sort of office where infantile trustafarian Rupert (James Bennison) flings thoughtless offensiveness around Charlotte (Goldie Majtas), a quiet feminist with an Oxford degree who’s just wants a job. Though having an affair with older if clever and charismatic Aidan despite herself.
Dee purrs with an Irish accent smoothly transmitting in second and third gear, never too intense; sightly dangerous, laid-back as Majtas, making an assured debut as the slowly appalled and disgusted Charlotte moves visibly from efficiency and some warmth to frozen disgust.
Bennison is a tour-de-farce of repellent fool whose education outstrips his worth, and privilege his deserving (arguably never deserved). Bennison’s remarkable in scenes where physical acting multiplies pratfalls. He’s even more startling in the Third Act when like Morris he reappears – first as a botox-frozen butler, then as Margaret Thatcher. Yes, you’ll have to see why.
That leaves Sam (Harry Morris), with as good a degree as Charlotte, also keen to earn; but not desperate. He turns down Aidan’s offer flat: go to the Antarctic, or if he has to give his 30-year-old girlfriend a surprise island trip to where she was conceived to propose marriage, well write about that. Sam has principles but how far must he be pushed?
That push doesn’t arrive as the proverbial hits when it turns out Carrie, from wannabe applicants sending near-naked pics Sam’s been asked to select from, isn’t 18, but 14. Her 15-year-old ex has revenge-porned her photo and faked her passport. Sam who picked her because she looked warm and “approachable” literally melts down, a superb performance all round by Morris, marking his third NVT appearance before drama school.
His return in the Third Act, when he’s blackmailed and cornered as hideously as the father of Carrie in Act Two, is a fantastic rerun. Aidan tried to traduce Sam’s integrity. Can even wilier Miranda succeed?
That’s to anticipate. Bradshaw (Andy Bell, a snarl of a performance, dangerously contained till he springs) has come no to take bribes but deliver Aidan to obloquy and if possible jail. To Charlotte’s increasing disgust, Aidan takes on the wily Mancunian, who seems invulnerable despite being on the dole, and hardly seeing his daughter, living with his ex.
Aidan’s demolishing of him closes like a steel trap: Bradshaw bought the mag, daughters of absent fathers sexually mature more quickly to attract a mate and new protector quickly (a neat entrapment using New Scientist, cunningly laid).
Bell glowers and damns, but will he take £25,000, even when the cheque’s ripped up? (Cheques: 2012 predicted they’d be a thing of the past by 2018. Perhaps that’s crept by already). Bell’s burning conviction meets in Dee an extraordinary sang-froid, as silken with menace as a spider.
That’s not a bad cue for Miranda (Kate Thomas) in Act Three (set nine months later) where she interviews Sam, and entertains two walk-ons by Bennison’s now disinherited or de-trustifed Rupert in those costumes: all bulging eyes, frozen gestures and attempts to close the door. In fact he’s humiliated into exactly the same absurd jobs as he did at Doghouse.
The distorting-mirror reruns of Acts One and Two in Act Three are classically-paced and satisfying.
And that’s not all that’s strikingly deja-vu. Thomas with her repeated endearments of Sam as “lovely’ plays with him like a cat, tripping him over and over, trying to get him to do the mirror-reverse of his time at Doghouse.
Now he’s been asked to spot flaws in flawless women. Surely his girlfriend had a physical flaw, and he must say what it is. But things have changed painfully since Sam was kicked out to save Doghouse, and he’s still in love. Too bad. What will he do?
Miranda’s a study in self-loathing, a mirror to misogyny earlier. In Kirkwood’s blistering critique Miranda shows women distorted in the same consumerist control, a shopaholic Stockholm Syndrome; where men jangle most of the keys, women objectify themselves before they’re asked, and the world’s Mirandas tear every other woman apart.
Thomas develops this as a vocal burlesque; certainly the repeated “lovely” and psychotic mind-games can play that way. I wasn’t alone in wondering if the whole of Act Three needs to be darker: more menacing in nuance, sombre in tone; played less for laughs so it sets it off brightly against the black? No reflection on Thomas though, another performance of nailing authority.
Elmer and Apollo Videaux between them account for double set and costumes (Elmer), technical lead including lighting, production management and much artwork (Videaux) and jointly the sound design. The studio is home to the first two acts in Doghouse, festooned with posters a rackety desk, snooker table, safe turned into a fridge for beer, pouffe. The Studio exudes seed efficiency and smartens up in the confrontation scene of Act Two.
The Upstairs gleams white and lighting shimmers as Electra, a women’s lifestyle magazine is all svelte white office furnishings, oozing luxury. The pics are altogether smarter. Products for road-testing elegantly disport themselves, never litter. The sound’s unobtrusive with the music after an initial blast, and costumes – particularly as modelled by Bennison – a riot. As are those by Thomas.
This is a stunning vindication of an underrated early play of Kirkwood’s. NVT over the past two years have really upped their game. They could always produce some outstanding work, though productions could be uneven. No more. There’s been a string of mostly superlative productions and NSFW at the end of the season is easily up with 2022-23 season’s best.
With superb direction and tech, the mostly professional and professionally-trained cast would grace any stage; and much can be expected of Morris, bound for Mountview. NVT triumphantly prove NSFW can join the modern canon.
