This latest offering from Greedy Pig Theatre Company is billed in the Rondo brochure as ‘a riotous new comedy’.
Photo © Douglas Murdoch
Riotous in many ways it is, but in the main, it is not played for laughs.
It’s a complex, often confusing, drama about young people and their problems and dilemmas around sex and sexual relationships, with occasional bursts of humour.
The set design, all in pink, involves a huge bed with a screen behind, which displays large numerals indicating the age at which the characters are in any particular scene, ranging backwards and forwards from 14 to 24.
There is a warning, or possibly a promise, displayed in the foyer, that the show will involve scenes of a sexual nature, dysfunctional relationships, kinks, some nudity, and loud thumping music. It does.
We begin at 20 with said loud thumping music, and a woman violently kicking a half-naked man, who apparently likes it. Comedy it isn’t. The plot of the piece, as it gradually unfolds, centres around Hattie, a young woman who looks for love, and for money, from being a ‘Sugar Babe’ to wealthy ‘Sugar Daddies’, from dating apps, from toying with sexual dalliances hetero and homo, dominatrix stuff with men in black vinyl and gimp masks, and even a vampire (what?).
Photo © Douglas Murdoch
This is punctuated by occasional well-executed over-the-top song and dance acts, with songs from the sixties and seventies, not current hits. It’s not clear why, but it’s very entertaining.
Otherwise, there are manifold impassioned arguments and emotional outbursts between all the characters at all ages in what becomes a confused and confusing exploration of their attitudes, and starts to feel repetitive – sometimes literally, when a scene we have already watched earlier is repeated word for word.
The acting skill of the performers is not in doubt, but it seems that the lengthy process of research and development into the show has led them to be more focused on their own enjoyment of that process, than on what might hold the attention of an audience.
At over two and a half hours with the interval, it starts to feel over-long, and interest wanes. You have the talent, guys, just strip it back a bit.
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Reviewer: John Christopher Wood | Star rating: ***
