[title]
How does it feel to watch hardcore pornography? In this collaboration between rising playwright Alice Birch and punkish physical theatre duo RashDash, the two performers show us with their clothed bodies when words fail. The effect is comically accurate and brutally direct: a distorted duet between one human body and one human prop. But the spirit of female camaraderie still bubbles underneath. ‘Is this ok?’ Helen Goalen’s Pig asks Abbi Greenland’s Sissy as she slams her violently to the floor.
This is Birch’s National Theatre debut, and pornography is a subject overripe for theatrical debate. Yet ‘We Want You to Watch’ doesn’t actually know what it wants – and is both bravely and riskily upfront about that fact. Pig and Sissy are two naïve militants on a mission to eradicate porn by any ludicrous means necessary. They kidnap the Queen and order her to ban it. They beg an American mega-hacker to turn off the Internet.
While the aesthetic is one of full-frontal performance art assault (sudden violence, thundering electro pop, loud and fast declamatory speeches, a Care Bear being frigged), the women’s lines are full of scripted hesitations and apologies. Whenever they seem to be building meaning, a surreal team of salespeople derail them by wheeling in crates of canned ‘sex’. In the final scene, the word ‘opportunity…’ is left dangling limply as a tidal wave of pornographic movement cascades on stage.
What’s failing here: women, language, or the play? It’s not always clear. But it’s a pitfall of work that burst open complex new subjects to leave you feeling unfulfilled. In one argument, men in particular use pornography because they crave certainty (or, as Pulp put it on ‘This is Hardcore’, ‘that goes in there, then that goes in there, and then it’s over’). Perhaps Birch figures there is something courageously and correctively female about refusing to offer any.