The Girlfriend Experience
Young Vic
Helen
Globe
Who exploits prostitutes? Men, of course. And women, too. In particular those feminist politicians, always at panic stations, always posing as moral redeemers, who promote the myth that there’s only one type of hooker in this country — the crackhead Albanian rape-slave living in an airing cupboard — and that her only hope of rescue is a No. 10 policy statement. The truth is more complex and less alarming. Alecky Blythe’s verbatim piece gives us the authentic low-down on the skin trade. ‘Verbatim’ means Blythe spent weeks recording live testimony from a group of aging prostitutes which she then shaped into a dramatic text. The script is performed by actors listening to the words relayed to them on earpieces. It sounds contrived but the result is lucid and amazingly naturalistic. You’re there, you’re in the whorehouse, with the whores. And you warm instantly to these big-hearted ladies who run their rented Bournemouth flat as a co-operative. No pimps, no drugs, just the usual work-place atmosphere, laughter and bitching, camaraderie and jealousy.
In the lead roles, Beatie Edney and Debbie Chazen are brilliantly credible, and they roam the poky boudoir gamely exposing great acreages of tasty flesh. Mundane details are best. When all the talent is busy a secret signal is placed on the doorstep advising would-be punters to return in 30 minutes. The signal is a garden gnome. It’s amazing to discover that these heroic old boilers haven’t built up a resistance to predatory men, haven’t inured themselves to the shoddy male habits of seduction and deceit. But no, these motherly tarts giggle and blush like teenagers whenever a man offers so much as a bunch of roses or a dinner date. ‘I’ve got a boyfriend,’ they simper, even though they know that the courting rites are a form of credit to be redeemed later for sex. Beneath the trusses, whips and studded thigh boots they’re just little girls with egg-shell hearts. Their milieu, the prostitutes’ underworld, is so encrusted with taboos and manipulated prejudices that this slice of real life is like a glimpse into the Forbidden City. We watch a chiffon-clad tart book a client for golden showers while mending a shelf with an Allen key, and it has the force of an Enlightenment revelation. What was covert, mysterious and threatening has become familiar, harmless and humane. I’ve rarely seen a show so full of truth and humour and, though this production (currently on its second London run) ends on 15 August, its star is bound to rise again.
At the Globe Frank McGuinness has adapted one of Euripides’ late plays. It’s an intriguing blend of Homeric myth and farce. The Trojan War, we’re told, was a prank. Helen never reached Troy. The gods spirited her to Egypt while the combatants slugged it out over a mirage. That alone is amazing. Attic tragedy meets anti-war satire. The plot toddles off into further ludicrous byways. Helen claims sanctuary at Proteus’ tomb and when Menelaus arrives he tries to rescue his wife by staging a fake funeral.
Pennie Downie is an adorable Helen, all wisecracks and mock-tragic faces, but not everything in this slapstick tragedy can match her. Ugly design! A tinfoil curtain makes up the rear wall; the play’s name is meaninglessly spelled out in Greek backwards; Proteus’ tomb is done as a yellow wedding cake growing cancerously out of a pillar wearing a gold condom; the Nile’s banks are piled up into a mound of blackened matting. Whenever a character has a Significant Moment he springs athletically to the mound’s peak and cups a thoughtful chin in his hand. Nonetheless this is worth a look. The only Greek tragedy written with the playfulness and informality of the Elizabethan theatre. Ideal for those with 5th-century phobia.
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