Theatre

Playwright Zoë Simon has a sound reputation on the national fringe. But we’re not making a cheap point when we say that the only good thing about her new play is the professionalism of the pole dance.

It is July 2006 and, while England fans nurse their World Cup wounds, Israeli tanks are moving into Gaza. These two, vastly incomparable concerns are embodied by a pair of colleagues: Annie, a trashy, media studies head, and Susan, a women’s studies tutor who has a Jewish husband, a new baby and a fondness for ‘ethnic’ prints. While Annie snorts coke and defends the football fans’ cultural right to be rowdy, Susan pats her papoose and expresses her indignation at the football fans’ lack of perspective.
 
Meanwhile, the importance of women’s studies is underlined, highlighted and circled in big fat marker pen for us by the improbable induction of a naive young student into the sex industry. Cue pole dance.

The simultaneous rise of media studies and decline of women’s studies has real cultural significance. Unfortunately, Simon seems to be one of those writers who thinks a good play is the sum of its ‘issues’. Divided by snatches of faux radio broadcasts, scenes escalate in implausibility, crassness and volume until you feel utterly besieged. ‘There are people here having a tough time, a shit time, a nothing, boring time,’ says Annie, inadvertently flapping her hand at the front row. It’s the only line that rings true.