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I lost count, but there are probably about 400 peggings and definitely one funeral in this scrappy, provocative comic portrait of an intense sexual romance between two young Londoners, Rachel (Elf Lyons) and Nick (Nicholas Armfield). (What’s pegging, you ask? Keep reading, snowflake.) Polite, bumbling Nick and sarky, intimidating Rachel first cross eyes at the local government office where they both work. After a bit of teasing and a casual drink date, they set off on a months-long sexual odyssey which evolves into an intense bedroom routine of Rachel repeatedly strapping on a dildo and showing Nick who’s boss.
Yep, that’s the definition of pegging, right there. This play really does ram it home over and over again – so much so that you wonder how we got here, repeatedly watching Nick being pushed backwards into a cushioned round podium that centres an otherwise mostly bare stage (apart from the row of alternative dildos and the big bright neon cock on the back wall). Although if we, the audience, are wondering how all this came to pass, Nick is probably thinking the same thing a hundredfold. ‘I saw my ancestors,’ he gushes early on, making pegging sound like an ayahuasca trip. The comedown isn’t far off though.
There’s a welcome sex-positive frankness in Lisa Carroll’s play when it comes to sex and to the links between the bedroom and one’s wider experience and hang-ups. But the more Bethany Pitts’s production wanders from slapstick, the more it stumbles, and ‘The Misandrist’ works best when it’s being silly, not serious. The two leads are so game that they alone give the production a likeable energy and momentum, and they’re gifted with some very funny lines. Rachel also has a powerful monologue late in the play that does a good job of connecting her experiences with the wider debilitating effects of both everyday and extreme misogyny. It’s an imperfect play that’s wrapped in a spirited production and has attitude to spare.