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The title of Rose Lewenstein’s new play, ‘Cougar’, deliberately invokes the so-called man-eating, older woman of mostly male lore. As this short, sharp hour progresses into murky territory, it complicates such crass caricature.
Leila (Charlotte Randle) has a deal with John (Mike Noble), a barman she meets at the drunken end of a corporate climate change conference. She’ll pay for his flights and hotels around the world, to keep her company, but their association begins and ends at the departure gates and ‘personal’ is strictly off limits.
The play dissects the unhealthy heart of this transactional relationship – how, almost immediately, John can’t squash either his growing feelings for Leila or his increasing resentment at ‘being kept’ by her. Cities and hotel rooms begin to blur together.
But Lewenstein keeps the picture from sliding into straightforwardness. From comments suggesting Leila’s been sexually assaulted, to an angry outburst at a judgemental John that she can never afford to turn up at work not looking perfect, we glimpse a woman shaped by a brutal society.
Director Chelsea Walker keeps her production on edge, flicking scenes (that occasionally time-jump) in and out of darkness. The staccato rhythm feels distractingly arch at the start, but settles down.
Randle and Noble develop a grippingly bruised and spiteful dynamic as Leila and John gradually destroy the hotel-room set, chucking the remnants of the mini-bar across the floor and bed as their arrangement collapses into feverish recrimination. They are both people broken by circumstance.
This is a play about possibly irrevocable damage – counterpointed by the ever-worsening world outside the hotel windows as the intensifying effects of climate change turn weather into a chaos of ‘red warnings’. Leila, meanwhile, writes speeches about green solutions for corporations only paying lip-service to the idea.
But the play strains too hard to connect the global to the personal. That crunching sound is metaphor with a capital M. Sparks of humour aside, its grimness is also relentless almost from the start. Crucially, it never fully justifies why Leila or John would ever have entertained their pact as a good idea.