P*RN

A show about pornography?  Why?  Because it’s there, it’s a fact, it’s huge, it’s all pervasive but strangely hidden, it’s part of many, many people’s lives, but… Let’s not talk about it.  P*RN personalises the subject, drags the dark secrets into the light…

P*RN is exactly what the website blurb says it is: ‘a monologue style play.’  That is, it’s a series of monologues presented mostly direct to the audience, but sometimes there’s a dialogue with an unseen interlocutor, or a dramatization interrupted by an authority figure’s voice from off-stage (‘What’re you doing in there?’).  Otherwise, there’s almost no character interaction which seems strange when the topic is, apparently, what people would rather not confess to…

Writer/Director Keelan Armstrong must have a fertile and insightful imagination, or he’s collected (over years) and curated a collection of anecdotes, confessions (some fictional, some may be true), factual material (e.g. porn is a $100 billion industry).  As a young gay person, Armstrong says he turned to gay porn for guidance – for validation and for what to do.  Nowadays, he says in a Theatre Works website interview, watching porn ‘feels good, [but] you know you shouldn’t be doing it, and you are terrified someone is gonna find you doing it.’

Of course, porn’s been around forever, but now it’s bigger – as a business, that is – than frescoes at Pompei, through to Fanny Hill, ‘dirty’ postcards and stag night movies.  Armstrong’s choice to start with some hard, cold facts makes us understand that intimate experiences – both performed and watched – are first about the money.

The nicely varied cast of six deliver one rapid-fire piece after another, eliciting attentive responses from a packed and very engaged opening night audience.  There’s laughter – sometimes because it’s just funny, sometimes a sign of rueful recognition, gasps as the shameful or secret is spoken aloud, quiet murmurs (more recognition), sighs (likewise) and people quickly checking out the people they came with… ‘Do you?’  ‘Have you ever…?’

The show kicks off with the engaging Cassidy Capraro giving us a quick and pointed history of the explosion of porn online that began with Pornhub.  Millions of people logged on within months of the site’s launch.  (Salient facts are projected on an awkwardly draped sheet up stage.)  Later, some unpleasant facts emerge – Pornhub being involved in child pornography and sex trafficking for example its early days. 

Francine Miranda gives us the difficulties of a teen searching for porn - or just titillation - on the family computer.  Kaia Reyes makes some folks squirm by being impossibly frank about girl-on-girl action, while Jackson Cross, in sad sack persona, tells us about his lonely life. 

Kit Baker has a slinky but riveting stage presence and a splendidly mordant tone to anything and everything she does.  Cassidy Capraro recurs in ever tighter costumes and with her warmth and vitality lifts the energy level every time. 

Possibly the funniest routines come from the perfectly cast (physically anyway) Rory O’Brien – first as a porn performer justifying his work – including his claim that he’s ‘not gay, but I do it.’  In another sketch, O’Brien auditions but rants at length a little too vehemently about his current reading – feminist literature – as Kaia Reyes films closeups of the attributes the producers actually require.

Yes, it’s sketch comedy and not a ‘play’ but if the sketches are funny or insightful or revealing, that’s perfectly fine.  But P*RN would be a better show if things were not marred by most of the cast’s frequent inability or unwillingness to speak up and be heard.  Much wit and insight get lost - too bad.

Michael Brindley