THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE. To 15 August.

London/Plymouth.

THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE
by Alecki Blythe.

Royal Court Theatre (Jerwood Theatre Upstairs) To 11 October.
Mon-Sat 7.45 Mat Sat & 2, 9 Oct 4pm.
then Drum Theatre Plymouth 16 October-1 November 2008.

revived at the Young Vic To 15 August 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat & 12 Aug 2.30pm.

TICKETS: 020 7922 2921.
www.youngvic.org
Review: Carole Woddis 27 September at Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Upstairs).

Success without sensationalism.
Verbatim Theatre is all the rage just now though, in truth, it never really went away. At the time of the Falklands War, in this theatre, Max Stafford Clark organised a stunning two-hander: Falkland Sound/Voce de Malvinas based on letters from British and Argentinian soldiers and their families.

At its best, Verbatim Theatre gives a heightened sense of reality; these are after all the words spoken by real people. When working well, it’s a hugely seductive, compelling form of theatre.

Alecky Blythe, whose Come Out Eli caught all the despair and grim humour of a community under siege one Christmas in Hackney a few years back, is on her way to perfecting her own particular version of it. Editing down her recorded conversations, she plays the words back to the actors on stage who, wearing earphones, then relate the words of the interviewees, down to the tiniest inflection and tone of voice.

The effect can be engrossing. In The Girlfriend Experience, however, the effect is also strangely downbeat. Quite consciously. For these are female sex workers recorded in a real brothel and the exercise is one of understatement not titillation. So we learn, notwithstanding the lubricious content of kinky boots, hand jobs and the rest (and accompanying derision, especially towards `punters’) of the almost numbing ordinariness and matter-of-factness of such work.

For the four very different, rather well-endowed women – Tessa, Amber, Poppy, and Susie – it is just a job. Money to enable them to look after ailing parents, see children through school.

In 90 short minutes, The Girlfriend Experience extracts any sense of sensationalism or voyeurism from a subject usually confined to hysterical condemnation, presenting the women instead as normal, down-to-earth mothers, wives and girlfriends.
Given the recent survey by the Poppy Project of some of the horrors involved in sex work and sex trafficking, Blythe’s treatment and Joe Hill-Gibbins’ light touch strikes me as on the anodyne side. There’s strength, however, in the good-nature and terrific performances and the fact that it does occasionally hint at the danger that comes knocking every time a client rings at the door.

Tessa: Debbie Chazen
Amber: Esther Coles
Poppy: Lu Corfield.
Suzie: Beatie Edney.
Man: Alex Lowe.

Director: Joe Hill-Gibbins.
Designer: Lizzie Clachan.
Lighting: Charles Balfour.
Sound: David McSeveney.
Voice Coach: Penny Dyer.
Assistant director: Natalie Ibu.

2008-10-05 00:54:47