A slap in the face

A new comedy trolls the women in the audience and its own characters.

(This review was sent in by a subscriber. My thanks to her for allowing me to republish it here)

Hi Graham, not sure if you’ve heard about this new play, The Sex Party (there’s a trans angle so thought it might have popped up on your radar), but I went to see it a few nights ago and I’m still quite stunned at how insulting it was.

The reviews were pretty underwhelming - but I was so pleased that the lovely Menier Chocolate Factory was finally reopening - plus I was impressed that playwright Terry Johnson was going there at all given that most people avoid any discussion of trans issues like the plague.

I was also quite curious to see how they dealt with the plot line - in which I’d heard a trans woman pitches up unexpectedly at a swinger’s party.

Just before curtains up, a guy came onto the stage to inform the audience that a cast member had been struck down by the flu and wouldn’t be able to perform that night. Fear not, though, he assured us, the ‘non-binary assistant director’ had heroically stepped into the breach and would be assuming the role of ‘Gilly’ for one night only. Weren’t we all lucky? etc. I found it quite amusing that the guy announcing this cast change managed to ‘misgender’ said assistant director (referring to him as ‘they' initially and ‘he’ in the next sentence) but hey - there’s only so much of this nonsense anyone can be expected to keep up with.

The Show Must Go On - I get it - but seriously? I wonder how the bed-ridden actress felt about the switch, which ended up making a mockery of her role. But who knows - maybe it was her idea?!

Anyway - it ended up being like some sick double mind-fuck. Was the audience not supposed to notice that the actor playing Gilly (supposedly a foxy unhappily married woman with an evident GC mindset) was patently a man - sorry - male-bodied person? Was my own internal dialogue about all of this itself supposed to make me feel guilty about having unconscious transphobic thoughts? Frankly I felt resentful that I was expected to try to make my eyes lie to my brain in order for the play to make any sense at all.

To put things in context - this was no close ‘pass’; ‘Gilly’ towered above her husband in her black thigh boots and was sporting some serious 5 o’clock shadow. A bit of a stretch if we were supposed to suspend disbelief. I know there’s nothing more offensive to trans/non-binary/whatever people than expressions such as ‘a man in a dress’, but there was no getting away from the fact that we were all looking - quite literally - at a man in a dress (black, slinky with a slit up the side if you’re interested).

Needless to say the audience were eager to demonstrate their woke credentials and embrace the situation with ‘right side of history’ gusto. Some of them laughed a bit too loudly and performatively at the initial repartee and double-entendres, but they couldn’t maintain it for long.

Things got much worse during the second half when the tone was supposed to shift to something altogether grittier and edgier.

Given that the audience had been trying to perform the mental gymnastics required to read a man as a woman since the first scene of Act 1, when the play’s actual trans woman character Lucy made her ‘shock’ entrance at the end of the first act it made almost no impact at all. In fact, rather than being a big ‘awks’ moment, it was almost a relief to know what we were dealing with: safe, familiar ground - a glossy trans woman rocking her towering Louboutins and silky slip dress with plunging décolleté. Cue some validating gushing about Lucy’s perfume and eyeshadow from some of the other female characters - reminding us all what it takes to be a ‘real woman’. ’Gilly’ looked like a very ‘budget’ Lucy by comparison. Only of course the assistant director wasn’t playing a trans woman - he/they was playing an actual woman. It was a carousel of confusion.

Worst of all, the hard-hitting lines Gilly was supposed to deliver about what it felt like for an actual woman to walk the streets in fear of male violence made no sense at all coming out of the replacement actor’s male mouth. The same was the case for the deeply uncomfortable revelation that Gilly had been sexually assaulted during the party and the ensuing topic of consent; what should have been really powerful stuff just felt like a damp squib. The relationship between Gilly and her husband was awkward to watch - it didn’t look as if the actor was enjoying it much. And as for the the simmering sexual ‘will they won’t they’ tension between Gilly and former lover host Alex - well let’s just say it wasn’t there. There’s only so much cognitive dissonance anyone can cope with.

Obviously the women all paraded about in their underwear while the men generally remained fully dressed throughout. Quelle surprise.

I’d seen a review that had claimed some of the characters were bigots expressing transphobic views. Frankly, I didn’t see anyone saying anything remotely offensive. Apparently wanting to know whether a fellow playmate at a sex party is or isn't in possession of a cock is unreasonable. FFS. I suppose it’s a bit like the temerity of a lesbian insisting on same-sex attraction - send them to re-education camps pronto!!! Two of the male characters argued that language mattered and that existing terms (‘woman’ anyone?) shouldn’t be appropriated. Quite right. One of Jeff’s parting shots was that he ‘likes to try to remain rational when confronted with irrationality’. One would hope so.

All in all it felt as if a fistful of views on the toxic gender debate had been lifted from social media, dumped on stage and left to fester there. The audience visibly flinched when JK Rowling’s name was mentioned, but rather than explore their discomfort, Johnson moved quickly on, as if avoiding a landmine. There is an irrationality at the heart of trans activism that would make for good subject for a playwright. Terry Johnson hasn’t got the courage to be that playwright.

Credit where credit’s due, there were several talented actors doing what they could on stage with sub-optimal material. The actor playing Lucy wasn't one of them - but of course no critic could possibly be expected to have the guts to point that out.

Was substituting Dwan with someone non-binary that night supposed to be terribly transgressive and radical? It just looked like another trolling exercise, a slap in the face for any woman in the audience with a spine. Once again, I’m delighted the Chocolate Factory has reopened, but I hope they make better choices in their programming in the future.