I’m going to be honest and say that I was worried I’d not be able to take a drama about a porn addict entirely seriously. It’s an unusual subject!
And certainly the early sections of Josie Rourke’s production of Sophie Chetin-Leuner’s Porn Play are happy to make relatively light of protagonist Ani’s habit. A successful English lecturer with a speciality in Milton, we first meet Ambika Mod’s Ani in the company of her soon to be ex, Liam (WIll Close). She has just won a big award for her work; he has chosen this moment to say he’s concerned about the amount of violent pornography she’s consuming. But her defence is pretty good: she doesn’t deny it at all, but instead compares wanking to having a glass of wine to unwind after a long day. She deftly flips the conversion on its head, and accuses him of exaggerating the problem out of jealousy over her award. He meekly agrees.
Rourke’s production is staged on a remarkable Yimei Zhao set: it transforms the Royal Court’s Upstairs theatre into a sort of gigantic flesh-coloured sofa with what I’m going to go ahead and say is a big hole that’s meant to be evocative of a vaginal opening as its focal point. And there’s a playful sensuality to the early stages, as the actors delve into the fleshy fabric of the set to pull out props, while there are scenes in which actor Lizzy Connolly flits around in a gauzy dress as a sort of spirit of desire (who also helps out with the scene transitions).
But Ani is not okay, and over the course of Porn Play’s vignette-like scenes she starts to spiral, her inability to feel comfortable without turning to appallingly violent porn gradually poisoning her life and relationships, and even taking a physical toll on her.
Although Rourke’s production features no actual porn or nudity, it still feels very brave of Mod to tackle this role so committedly: it involves a lot of stage wanking. But her increasingly haunted performance emerges as a powerful portrait of somebody buckling under an addiction. Chetin-Leuner is adept at writing amusing dialogue – Ani’s encounter with an obnoxious fellow addict stands out – while treating her protagonist seriously.
Part of the sleight of hand to carry this off involves sending the play on a trippy, impressionistic tangent as Ani’s life disintegrates, the weirdness somewhat negating the need for earnestness. It’s not totally out there, but it becomes less clear if every scene is ‘real’ or happening in her head. But the stranger it gets, the harder it is to see it as truly about porn addiction. It’s about a woman’s descent – potentially shadowing Eve’s in Paradise Lost – for reasons that are tied to porn addiction, but probably not a typical example of it. It’s too extreme to serve as sober commentary on its subject.
Which is fair enough, and Chetin-Leuner is rightly wary of having her characters sit around having very serious chats about wanking. The fact that Ani’s addition is somewhat inexplicable is a point the author plays with. But the more unmoored from naturalism it gets, the more Ani’s addiction feels like some sort of random, esoteric punishment inflicted upon her by the gods, rather than an exploration of a real world problem. The Milton allusions are smart, but do feel like a clever diversion.
It’s a bold play with a fantastically committed performance from Mod. My basic problem is that violent porn addiction in women is such a rare and delicate subject to be tackling that Chetin-Leuner’s splashy conceptual flourishes feel like a personal hobby horse she’s unsubtly worked in. Which probably wouldn’t matter if Ani was an alcoholic – there are millions of plays about alcoholics – but as far as I know this is the only play ever written on this subject, and the Milton stuff feels like a distraction. Still, there’s no denying that it’s a singular work, both enjoyable and distressing, and its ultimate message is maybe less to do with porn specifically and more that any addiction is capable of destroying you
