A whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on

Sometimes it’s hard to describe a play without appearing to defame the writer, the performer and the theatre responsible for the production. Here’s what I saw. A semi-naked woman lurks in a corner, with her back to the audience, shaking. Rap music pounds. The woman shakes and shakes. Then she shakes a bit more. And a bit more. As her weird spasms enter their 17th uninterrupted minute, the spectators glance anxiously at their watches. Finally the woman’s twitching ceases. Speaking in a New York accent, she recites a conversation between an inquisitive child and an older girl. The theme is explicit sex chat. We aren’t told the girls’ names, or their location or their relationship with each other, but we are informed that semen bears the flavour of its producer’s most recent meal.

The rap music restarts. The woman lies down on her elbows and knees, and starts to cavort awkwardly without skill or grace. Is she being violated by a ghost? Is she performing yoga on the live rail of the Victoria line? She stands again. Table lamps scattered on the floor begin to flare and fade. The woman reads from scraps of paper littered around her. They contain hate mail. Revolting insults fill the air. African-Americans are cursed and vilified. Among the abuse is a claim that only one in 100 million black people is beautiful.

A second rape scene follows in which the woman thrusts her groin into nothingness to imitate the barbarous actions of some unnamed predator. And still we have no clue who the woman is, what she seeks, or whose voices she is articulating. Everything in this show has the same emotional texture: angry, cold, self-centred, opaque, disconnected and brutalising.