FringeReview UK 2024
After Sex
Arcola Theatre, Izzy Parriss Productions, Three Sisters Productions
Genre: Comedic, Contemporary, Drama, LGBT, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Arcola Theatre Studio 2
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
“Why don’t you sit on my face and tell me about my star sign and see how long you can keep talking for.” Siofra Dromgoole’s After Sex directed (and produced) by Izzy Parriss runs at the Arcola Theatre Studio 2 till August 3rd.
Deservedly hugely popular. With uber-smart dialogue, Dromgoole ensures that under the brittle wrap, there’s an ache and overriding desire for connection.
Writer Siofra Dromgole and Director/Producer Izzy Parriss, Intimacy Director Stella Moss, Associate Director Philippa Lawford, Music and Sound Designer Helen Noir, Lighting Designer Simeon Miller, Set and Costume Consultant Pip Terry, Co-Movement Directors Nadine Elise Muncy, Rachel Laird Movement Consultant Stephanie Burrell
Stage Manager James Christensen, PR Chloe Nelkin PR, Production Marketing Megan Gibbons
Till August 3rd
Review
“Why don’t you sit on my face and tell me about my star sign and see how long you can keep talking for.” Siofra Dromgoole’s After Sex directed (and produced) by Izzy Parriss runs at the Arcola Theatre Studio 2 till August 3rd.
A couple who met at work are meeting for casual sex. And for now it’s secret. But what might they conceal from each other and themselves, even if they don’t quite mean to? Dromgoole’s hyper-alert Him (Azan Ahmed) and Her (Antonia Salib) move through moments of sex to probing what they want, what each is prepared to reveal.
And they’re a bit terrified of that. It’s casual. So why do they keep asking questions? The need to connect works against their first avowed intent over 65 minutes of this taut play. It flickers through scenes like the Tinder He still uses, declaring it doesn’t want you to succeed at relationships: to think the problem is you. “It’s really sexy when you explain things to me” Salib quips: which could be a mansplaining put-down but isn’t here.
Actors peel outer clothes on and off but there’s no nudity. Intimacy director Stella Moss has them in balletic poise, in blackout (in Simeon Miller’s clean and tenebrous lighting) so we only hear; or standing apart, disembodied for a monologue.
Salib particularly stands at one moment during sex, remote from her body. It isn’t simply theatrical, but revealing of Salb’s Her: intellectual detachment fighting something else.
Pip Terry’s stripped set points a simple E-shape to the audience, clothes piled in the middle, two mattresses: a minimal bleakness of living.
Salib’s character starts off questions voiced and not voiced. For instance about books. Her last is Eve Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet. Though it’s Him who’s bisexual. It’s carried lightly, but you feel Her’s cerebral side: a pathological fear, she later confides, of being discovered “boring”. He likes boring.
He‘s nonplussed at Her’s “There is literally nothing more depressing than a condom post sex” which turns amusing about bin bags but invites something else. Yet Dromgoole has Her wield quotes like tripwires: Hanif Kureishi’s “You fall in love, only to realise you’re at the mercy of someone else’s childhood.” It seems nothing, but there’s a phone call from childhood shortly after.
What ripples through these smart, hurt people are shifts in post-coital feelings. Damaged by the environment, acute awareness of society shaping their choices, even cultural snares.
There’s favourite lines of poetry: Him, interestingly MacNeice’s ‘Prayer before Birth’ and Her e.e. cummings’ ‘somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond’ with “not even the rain/has such small hands”. One poem not referenced almost gloves the play: Larkin’s ‘Talking in Bed’ ”an emblem of two people being honest…” with “Words at once true and kind,/Or not untrue and not unkind.”
Ahmed’s character flinches at both Her’s shy passes of feeling and cynical brutal put-downs. Still, Salib’s woman lets slip: “I’m just worried because I think what I’m being turned on by is the fact that you’re imagining a stable future with me, whereas what you’re being turned on by is the potential potency of your own sperm.”
Ahmed’s Him sees a remote offstage boyfriend: one key moment is Her imagining them all having sex, thanking Him “for not making that weird.” But Ahmed’s Him seems more mute than needs; the actor hovers. Even with other commitments, a solitary mother, you’re egging him on. When there are choices though, sometimes it’s Her who doesn’t give Him time to respond to a declaration before vanishing. Both characters are so memorably fluked with their own awareness you just egg them on to let go. Yet even after a crisis, the play opens as it blacks out.
At moments the audience sigh with sentiment: it’s deservedly a hugely popular show. With uber-smart dialogue, probing questions, brilliant one-liners we’ve all half-articulated, Dromgoole ensures that under the brittle wrap, there’s an ache and overriding desire for connection.
