Pornography

Pornography

07 August, 2009
by: Sandraleong

Seven o' clock on a Thursday night, the skies have opened up and the atmosphere at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn is rife with anticipation.  It's make-or-break night for a play that has cut a mean swath through theatre land, having already generated reams and reams of almost-sycophantic pre-show buzz. The who's who of the media have made the trek up to North London with palpable expectations and to ask: So, is it any good?

The production on the firing line is Pornography written by Simon Stephens, the playwright/ wunderkind who's already won an Olivier in 2005 for his work On The Shore Of The Wide World.  Written in October  2005 in response to the July 7 bombings, Pornography imagines the events surrounding the attack through the eyes of eight characters, bomber included.  It was first staged in Germany before travelling to Edinburgh, where some critics labelled it the Theatre Festival's most shocking offering. Four years on, memories of 7/7 are no longer as raw - and the controversial play has finally come home.

From exposition to resolution, Pornography is crafted as a series of monologues where scenes can be arranged in any order.  Though the characters exist separately, their private lives are framed by the public going-ons of the time: Live Earth, London winning the bid for the 2012 Olympics and the bombings.  Together they unravel portraits of aimlessness, individualism, discontentment and moral decay; the varied ills of urban living. A racist, mouthy schoolboy has an unhealthy infatuation for his teacher; a reclusive widow spews hatred about the world around her; a neurotic mother and office worker is driven to self-sabotage; a brother and sister pair fall in love; a university graduate uses her charms to win a job from her former professor.  Hovering at the fringes is the bomber, an unassuming young man who leaves his family behind in Leeds to embark on his final mission.  The city is degenerate, he muses. Quivering with a strange but identifiable sense of hope and yearning,  he says he would like to 'take a bomb to it all'.

On one level, Pornography is an attempt to humanise the events of 7/7, away from the media spectacle it became. Victim, bystander or perpetrator – isn't everyone still a human being?  On another, Stephens urges us to ponder the way we live today - devoid of sentiment and moral compass.  Is London soulless? Aptly, the city is depicted on-set with little embellishment as actors sit on unpainted wooden crates while bare train cables crackle overhead. 

Stephens cannot be faulted for putting these prickly questions forward. But at parts, he seems to resort to the glaringly obvious to get points across.  The repeated juxtaposition of the steadfastly likeable bomber versus the Londoners, each flawed and jaded in their own way, is one. And when one character says again and again that 'today is an important day' in a portentous reference to impending attacks, you wonder if this tiresome scripting device is perhaps slightly unimaginative.

The best is saved for last, however. As each lost soul reaches the tipping point in their individual tales, the bomber begins his tense journey on the Circle Line, backpack fully loaded. There is no need for a theatrical explosion. He simply walks off the stage and slams the door with a resolute boom – stage direction at its most powerful.

So is Pornography any good? Well, it checks all the right boxes.  The message strikes a chord. The performances by the ensemble are superb. Sheila Reid, who plays the widow, is a clear audience favourite, juggling bare-faced despair with the occasional comedic quips.  The edgy theatre it's staged in is also fitting with the general ethos of the production.

But you can't help but feel that it's become a victim of its own hype, smug in the belief that screaming that it's controversial thus makes it so.  Its missive, while pertinent, is in the end, nothing particularly daring.  Modern life is a complex problem – but hey, we've known that all the long.

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Sandraleong