The beauty of Lucy Kirkwood's NSFW [Not Safe For Work] is that it's far from occupying a box marked: 'polemic amounting to rant'. The polemic was present, sure, but we came at it sideways rather than full-frontal, and it was backed up by an insight into how power is built and maintained, and what it does to its practitioners and its victims; and also in the very middle of the play by a prolonged duel in the form of an interview where the psyches of two men was laid bare at a distance of five metres before our eyes.
We are invited into the offices of successively a men's (Doghouse) and then a women's magazine (Electra) - both cunningly picked names; let us recall that Electra in Greek myth connived in the killing of her mother Clytemnestra. The former's business is to exploit women and specifically their bodies for male delectation in the pages of the mag. Then the roof falls in when it carelessly prints a picture of a topless, underage 14-year-old. Electra, on the other hand, ploughs its niche furrow by highlighting flaws in the bodies of models and actresses. The purpose of editor Miranda (Abby McCann) seems to be to erase every tiny female imperfection by the time the next issue goes to print in order to present a picture of perfection to its imperfect readership.
The full psychology of this escapes me, beyond the circumstance of the mag's pages naturally dripping with ads for creams, lotions, sprays, exfoliants and anti-ageing products galore, all ready to soothe the discontent and inadequacy that the pics are fostering. It's an odd thing to want to create a miserable clientele, but then Miranda and her ilk deal in the exercise of power and are not over-fussy about the form their dominion may take. Abby McCann played with great skill this heartless Podsnap with her finger stabbing at the needy pulse of womanhood. Employing repetitive tics and gestures to great effect, she manipulates the desperate-for-a-job Sam with faux-sympathy. Gushing away in a metallic voice, she thumbscrews Sam into joining in her unholy game until he confesses his ex-girlfriend's nipples are too big for her breasts.
The good folk at Doghouse, already in a Mephistophelean compact through the lending of their souls to sponsor their seedy activities, are galvanized into fending off costly legal action, and editor Aidan deploys his henchpeople accordingly. Thus the almost obligatory football banner on the wall and the table-top toys are hastily cleared away for the arrival of the injured father. Tom Mackie tried hard to tackle both the bruised inner man and the conventionally angry parent; unfortunately, though, he invariably reached for the loudhailer at the character's prime moments of stress, so the effect became a little tiring.
He is successively sympathized with, then pacified, then browbeaten and finally blackmailed by the editor under the helpless gaze of assistant Charlotte, a young woman with vaguely feminist ideals but also a pressing need to pay her rent. Lucy McIlgorm played her subtly, her watchful impassivity putting me on tenterhooks for her to burst out and denounce the whole enterprise, but no! In the most shocking moment of all, she advises: 'let her [the 14-year-old] come back when she's 18 and she can appear on the front cover!'
Sam, a sensitive young intern (George Cobb, in perhaps the most difficult role of the five, excellently acting with dogged energy) is duly made the scapegoat. Aidan's high-handed treatment of these two suggests that, like Miranda, his principal purpose in life is dominion over others, with the flogging of women's body images to men being the means to that end at this juncture in his life. Cameron Spain apparently casually shows us the corrupted interior of a superficially reasonable man – confident, clever acting.
The direction by Emma Howlett kept the tone of the drama just a little larger-than-life, while not allowing it to drift into gross caricature. This corrupt world was given the more stark contrast by the playing at the start of the famous newsreel of Emily Wilding Davison being mown down at the Epsom Derby of 8th June 1913 (pity it was shown on a laptop screen, therefore difficult to make out), and also the pure tone of a little choir bookending the play. The excellent Alex Rugman was so grossly repellent in the role of Rupert, a young magazine hack, that paradoxically I almost regretted his early disappearance from the action (and further sightings of his baseball cap worn with collar-and-tie! Good observation from costume designer Francesca Back). All these performances were of course the fruit of their collaboration with Emma's overall vision for the material, who also took pains by means of movement to see that the drama never became over-talky or moribund.
This was a felicitous conjunction of timely script and very skilful direction. Great stuff from TheatreGoose!