FringeReview UK 2024

Banging Denmark

MESH Theatre Company in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre

Genre: Comedy, Contemporary, Dark Comedy, Feminist Theatre, LGBTQ+ Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, Short Plays, Theatre, World Theatre

Venue: Finborough Theatre

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

“How could I, with a mouth full of clitoris?” protests a woman to a man, where “could” is the plot. Following its hugely acclaimed Sydney Theatre Company debut in 2019, Van Badham’s Banging Denmark comes home, as we’ll see, to Finborough Theatre directed by Sally Woodcock till May 11^th.

So why is it that at the play’s ah climax four characters find themselves in one-night-stands with maybe the wrong person? Not quite the couples you’d predict. How wrench scream-out-but-affecting comedy from a Pick-Up artist and iconic feminist? Much Ado it ain’t, nor thankfully Shrew, but Badham triumphs.

Above all Badham delights in ferocious dissections of sexual politics – queer and heteronormative, conflicted desire, performative roles shunting us to oblivion, loneliness, self-sabotage, feminist-slut-shaming, ad-libs.

There’s witty characters who won’t do the decent thing and perform to stereotype: so un-British it’s Australian as Kathy Lette. And the age of Katherine Angel’s Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again dawns: how to state desire clearly, consent warring with cultural imperatives.

Misogynist but alas attractive Jake Newhouse (Tom Kay) aka Guy de Wit lounges “on my yacht” – in reality his grungy room. On phone-ins, podcasts, blogs, he dispenses seduction-and-disposal tips to men, using derogatory terms and horribly effective advice to all those Incels and wannabe Pick-Up artists out there.

Seduction? Sexcess? Abuse more like. However, he’s fallen for Anne Toft (Maja Simonsen) aloof feminist librarian, and knows none of his revered patter will work. He knows Anne’s from a country where parity respect and rational cool are in the DNA. Jake calls Europe cold and it’s no accident Badham makes Anne Danish.

Time to change your life? No, just seek out – under your real, unknown name – famed feminist Ishtar Madigan (Rebecca Blackstone) whom as Guy de Wit you bankrupted in court for shaming you.

So much so, as Jake finds out, Ishtar’s living in a photocopy room at UCL, fed and supplied by her friend, former pupil and maths/stat genius Dr Denyse Kim (Jodie Tyack) who got her PhD in before Ishtar did. Jake knows Ishtar can’t refuse £50,000, and knows Anne reveres Ishtar. Ishtar’s eating raw cereal. She’s not alone in that habit, and later eats it in another room.

Even when Jake’s assaulted by black-belt Denyse before he arrives and refused by Ishtar, he leaves £1,000 for “confidentiality” in notes. Having got up close, Denyse reviews the situation. Meanwhile new man and similar maths prodigy Toby (James Jip) touchingly pines for Denyse: all those gaming numbers they share. Why’s he being friend-zoned?

Denyse and Ishtar though are conflicted. And there’s Jake’s… cheekbones to consider. Meanwhile Jake finds how adamant Anne is, white-gloved to protect books like an original 1947 Matisse volume (mmm looks like the 2002 Tate catalogue; nicely sourced).

Badham was Literary Manager at Finborough 2009-12, and has subsequently written six plays. Two are adaptations and Banging Denmark – directed in 100 pun-zapping minutes by Woodcock – is her fourth overall. Straight out of the magnificently rude – and funny – Australian feminist tradition from Greer to another Sydney luminary, novelist Kathy Lette, it shows what’s changed and what’s wincingly current, in five years.

What’s changed is simply the Thing in the room: Andrew Tate wasn’t so prominent in 2019 and it’s difficult to separate deeply-wounded-but-maybe-redemptive Jake (though not excuse) from Tate.

Not every ‘disagreeable’, in Keats’ phrase, evaporates now; but whilst Badham’s comedy runs riot, you’ll suspend disbelief.

Jake isn’t wholly dislikeable, obviously. Badham’s finely balanced Jake’s character but Kay brings him to life, with just that touch of unreconstructed braggadocio to rougish attraction through moments of vulnerability.

The cast lift this witty knife-edge-and-it-cuts-wrong text to both firecracking heights and moments of repose. Blackstone excels as uncompromising-but-compromised Ishtar, sexually confident but lonely, somehow lecturing but living in as much as squalor as Jake, whatever Denyse can do.

In puffa-jackets and goofy hat (Denyse isn’t much better shout out to co-designer Leah Kelly’s costumes) both warm and funny, angry but prone to violent feelings that can go either as Blackstone makes a conflicted character floor you with contradictions yet make you fall in love with them.

Tyack moves effortlessly from maths geek to liberated woman, shamed by no-one, handing every Celia-to Rosalind rebuke but with agency answerable to no-one. Simonsen outside her almost glass-boxed library chill-box, all in white can slink out and warm alarmingly.

One hilarious moment has women using similar seduction techniques to those Jake advocates and uses himself. No-one gets out of here unscathed. Most touching of all, Jip in a fine speech demolishes toxic masculinity and finds through that the way to speak out.

This clever, buzzy want-to-quote-and-spoil-it script calmly shatters each prediction. Fight and intimacy director Stephen Louis predictably works overtime, every clinch and half-Nelson a comic turn.

Katy Mo and Leah Kelly’s set is a yuck of two spaces, stage right Jake’s room: sofa and laptop, just once Anne’s white-wine-and-white-gowned pad. Opposite there’s a grimed-in photocopier-room-cum-broom-cupboard. Both feature doors much-used, as are all exits: Woodcock’s superb direction fizzes occasionally like a farce up close. In between there’s lucent calm where the slim library space shimmers on a stand.

Ed Lewis’s sound pumps street-noise and ambience, making it a big world in here. Richard Williamson’s lighting again magics moonlit chill and noon and those dingy interiors.

Badham’s plays stage what’s too often stayed on the page and we could do with so much more of it. This production’s 100 minutes are so absorbing you’re not quite sure if the time’s stopped, or just your preconceptions. Stunning, a must see.

Published April 20, 2024April 21, 2024 by Simon Jenner