FringeReview UK 2025

Porn Play

Royal Court

Genre: Contemporary, Drama, Feminist Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre

Venue: Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

A woman glides onto a padded stage, cream up the walls and seating. She lies down in its coiled centre, writhes with sexual pleasure, but only when she sees herself. It’s one of Lizzy Connolly’s roles. But here she’s a figment of someone else’s Miltonic fantasy. Of all things erotic the poet’s Eve mightn’t be first you’d think of. Sophia Chetin-Leuner’s Porn Play directed by Josie Rourke plays at the Royal Court Upstairs till December 13. It’s sold out.

Ambika Mod’s Ani Sandhu is a thrilling young academic, just turned 30 with a prize for her first book on Milton’s Paradise Lost, about to be awarded. Originally we were to see that twice, but the prelude is sensibly stripped away and the first scene is Mod facing off Ani’s boyfriend Liam (Will Close). Liam feels increasingly pushed out of Ani’s erotic imaginary. It’s not Fleabag wanking to Obama on her laptop. Ani’s turned to hardcore porn over the years.  Liam (slightly awkward in his judgmentalism, trying so hard to be) feels shut out. Like Eve, whose sexual agency she champions later, Ani’s trying to push him to eat apple pie. Then she loses patience.

The play’s double strand might seem improbable but it’s fiendishly persuasive. Chetin-Leuner’s intersectional critique of male violence both socially and through Milton’s own misogyny is entwined as cleverly as the serpent’s temptation. What Ani has achieved comes at a cost. She’s already filtered her own sexual desire, intensified by grief at her mother’s death through cervical cancer when Ami was fourteen. Here though Ani has discovered a metaphor for her own sexual fixations: increasingly drawn to male coercion and grounding it in her own sexuality. It’s the same with Milton. Ani has reappropriated Eve, repurposed male desire into autoerotic fixation (Eve staring at herself) as affirmative. Eve could almost be staring into a laptop.

Ami though doesn’t leave it there. Slowly her porn obsession bleeds not just into her relationships or the one she has with herself, but Ami’s friendships, family relationship, sexual health and ultimately professional life begin to suffer. Connolly’s Jasmine is initially supportive of Ami’s breakup and early porn addiction: “You were a little horny teenager.” But Jasmine soon leaves their shared bed in disgust. Just before, Connolly’s Student is triggered by some of Ami’s lecture content. There’s some play on identity politics (the kind Ash Sarkar criticises), but the Student makes some fair points.

Chetin-Leuner’s writing increasingly enters moments of fantasy, a little like Ayckbourn’s Woman in Mind, where we mishear along with Ami what people seem to be saying. This hurtles to a climax as it were that suggests a catastrophic disassociation in the middle of a speech. And (with another scene cut) a slightly improbable outfall. Nevertheless Chetin-Leuner’s intersectional prods at male racism mixed with misogyny and ageism brings edgy comedy in the prize-giving.  First Ami’s mistaken for a wine-waiter and even then: “You’re very young… such an interesting name. where’s that from?”

If Mod’s interactions with Connolly – also a colleague and blasé doctor, as well as therapist – are points where Ami might feel safe enough to question herself, her interactions with two of Close’s roles are troubled. When he’s not Liam sashaying back and forth in her life, Close apparates as wannabe Alpha salesman James: the porn addiction male with an exclusive male group who find Ami’s presence disturbing. That’s even after James fixates on Ami. He’s a mere prelude to MA student Sam. Ami’s IRL experiences might be beige but does she really want BDSM? It’s a powerful moment as roles blur.

Yimei Zhao’s fluffy cream set – you need to wear overshoes so as not to damage it – covers everything from seats through to the set, a continuum of the protagonist’s paradise. Items from laptops to gurneys are pulled out between the cushions It’s miraculously simple, variously lit by Mark Henderson in subtle pastel strips between soft circles of the part cochlea-like, part-vulva shape centring the stage. Helen Skiera’s score pumps not just sound effects but a soft-edged eeriness.

Beyond all though, and apart from his sexist Old Man role, Asif Khan‘s Dad surprises by being key to Ami’s self-reflection.  From concerned, appalled, over-protective and not free of projecting shame, Khan’s Dad is capable of insight and conjuring a different world.

Khan’s apparently overbearing Dad justifies his actions in unexpected ways Connolly and Close make much of very different characters. Mod though powers through the gamut of Ami’s experience and self-inflicted pain with both attack and a wincing vulnerability. In physical pain from sexual activity, Ami’s compulsion seems at first a mix of comedy and alarm, then agony. Mod’s Ami isn’t just vulnerable and addicted; she’s also ferociously spot-on. A superb, rounded and thoroughly believable performance.

Porn Play’s 100 minutes ends on a tender note of hope and rebuilding. After temptation and fall, there’s a singular way back, paradoxically via the end of Paradise Lost. It’s this that tells you where the play’s headed, even if it hasn’t quite landed. Moments the Student highlights might have been more developed towards the (not quite believable) crisis, and those witty hallucinatory sequences are left hanging. But mostly this is an absorbing, witty, layered play: and Chetin-Leuner nails Milton and Eve as singular metaphors. A must-see.

Dramaturg Gillian Greer, Casting Directors Jessica Ronane CDG, Safeya Shebil, Assistant Director Molly Stacey, Production Manager Marius Ronning, Costume Supervisor Ellen Rey de Castro, Company Manager Mica Taylor, Stage Manager Aime Neeme, DSM Charlotte Padgham, Lighting Supervisor Lucinda Plummer, Lighting Programmer Lizzie Skellett, Lead Producer Charlie Bunker for Impossible Producing, Executive Producer Steven Atkinson, Photograph Credit: Helen Murray

Published November 21, 2025November 27, 2025 by Simon Jenner