Review – Cate Blanchett in When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, Dorfman Theatre

• 

Oh my word. You’d think by now we would know better.

Did we not see the clue in the pretentiously wordy title, When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other? Did we not hear the alarm bells in the play’s director “a director who polarises audiences like no other” Katie Mitchell? But no, we did not listen to common sense. We were stupidly sucked in by the starry casting of actress (she’s accepted Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress Academy Awards so we think we can still call her an actress) Cate Blanchett. 

We entered the ballot to get tickets. Despite paying the National for advanced booking privileges we still had to enter a frigging ballot! This won us the right to attempt to buy tickets. Many were unsuccessful. They will never know how lucky they were. Unless they read on.

In the unlikely event that you have tickets then read no further. We will also seek to give those who are thinking of queuing for tickets from 3am in the morning (yes, we know someone who did this!) a full night’s sleep.

Newspapers got a little aroused last week when an elderly lady in the audience passed out during the first preview. Apparently as a reaction to the so called extreme scenes of sex and violence. We don’t believe that for a second. We believe it’s the least embarrassing way of getting removed from a play that runs at 2 hours without an interval. They are not fainting now. Some just got up and left.

This is Martin Crimp’s twelve variations of Samuel Richardson‘s 1740 novel Pamela. Here it is reimagined in a double garage complete with a real Audi (convincingly garagey design from Vicki Mortimer) where Woman (Blanchett) and Man (Stephen Dillane) indulge in a series of tedious role-playing sex games aided and abetted by a group of voyeurs, Girl 1 (Emma Hindle) and Girl 2 (Babirye Bukilwa) a young man called Ross (Craig Miller) who may or may not have burnt a young family to death and Mrs Jewkes (Jessica Gunning) who is very fat.

Now before you get all excited and uppity about mentioning her size, it is a significant plot point, that is if we may flatter the piece by saying it has something that resembles a plot. The many references to her size are the only things that are shocking about the play. Gunning is supremely watchable, her scenes are the only good best moments of the evening.

Man and Woman use microphones to communicate sometimes and switch roles frequently. Blanchett and Dillane are both rather good but affect a slightly theatrical, artificial style that quickly begins to pall. Their heavy lifting involves Dillane dressing in women’s underwear and blonde wig while Blanchett switches between wearing the wig and Ann Summery underwear and a man’s suit. Among the indignities she is called upon to perform are crawling and begging for cherries, pretending to masturbate (as a man), taking over from one of the girl’s in a half-hearted hand job for Dillane, having her forehead carved with a scalpel, having her face shaved, crawling over the top of the car and sliding down the bonnet, being dressed up in a meringue wedding gown and putting on a strap on dildo to take Dillane up the rear view mirror.

This gave us a real issue to ponder. Does a strap on constitute as a prop or a costume? Discuss.

If any of this sounds like your sort of thing, believe us it’s all about as erotic as Brexit negotiations and appears to drag on longer. If you’re expecting some sort of coup de théâtre at the end, or even the up and over garage doors to swing open then think again.

It wasn’t just us. We have never seen so many people conspicuously checking their watches throughout. To say the applause is muted at the end is to flatter the applause hugely. Some refused to clap at all.

No doubt there will be those who will say they found the gender politics fascinating and Me Tooingly timely. If, as an audience, we are the voyeurs as well, then we found it had a childish need to shock. ‘I’d rather be raped than bored.’ breathes Cate. You get the general idea. Who knew S & M could be so dreary? It may serve to put people off it for life.

Our highlight of the evening was seeing Stanley Tucci in the little boy’s room both before and after the show. We also spotted him “going back”, presumably to convene with Cate. He’s an actor. He’ll be able to pretend he liked it.

If our rating seems a little harsh it’s because this sort of thing really shouldn’t be encouraged. Yes, we had been sufficiently tortured thank you very much.

The audience really should be given a safe word. “Enough”.

•