A bit of sauce on the way in Whitley Bay
Comedy HARD shows sex work's no soft option
In the old Carry On days of Sid James and Barbara Windsor, it would have been called saucy – and the red lights they’ll be hanging in the windows hardly knock that idea on the head.
Nor do the vampish extras they were thinking might greet people with a cheeky wink as they arrive at Laurels, the upstairs theatre in Whitley Bay.
But the creative team behind a play called HARD insist there’s more to Alison Stanley’s tale than titillation.
During a break in rehearsals, actor Rod Glenn explained the play’s central relationship.
“Zee, played by Alison, is looking after her dad who’s disabled after suffering a stroke.
“I play Dad and she’s basically my live-in carer. He’s a curmudgeonly, bitter man who wasn’t actually that great a husband and dad before he had the stroke.
“He was a big drinker and had a temper, and he has become more embittered now he’s reliant on his daughter for just about everything.
“That’s the dynamic at the start and as the play progresses, and when he discovers what Zee is doing, there’s massive conflict between father and daughter.”
Zee, beside herself and short of cash, has discovered sex chat lines… and it leads her to one thing and then another.
In one of the play’s key scenes, the truth about what she does for a living comes out in a storm of recrimination and hypocrisy.
Alison Stanley, as actress, writer and now head of theatre and programming at Laurels, favours drama about real-life issues such as breast cancer (T*ts Up) or autism (Living the Life of Riley) – but generally served with lashings of comedy.
In HARD, those lashings might verge on the literal.
One scene involves Zee taking lessons from a whip-wielding dominatrix, played by Rosie Fox, an actress from Amble but now based in London.
“When I read the play I was quite shocked,” admitted Rosie.
“But I also thought, this is going to be a laugh. Credit to Alison for the way it’s written. It could have been tacky but because it’s so funny and the characters so sincere, it has a proper charm to it.”
She demonstrated how her “actually quite ditzy” dominatrix character swings between sweet-natured when tutoring Zee and ferocious when ordering her submissive male ‘client’ to “Sit down!” or “Shut up!”
Alison said the play was inspired by the real-life memoir of a North East sex worker who had come to realise fetishes were more lucrative than actual sex.
If its purpose is not to titillate, then neither is it to point a finger.
“When things are done about sex workers there’s usually a lot said about trafficking and all of that,” said Alison.
“But this is inspired by women who have chosen to go in for this work and it tells us something about their lives.
“We meet some of their customers and they’re mostly hilarious but not all of them are nice. Some of these women have to put up with horrific things.”
Rod Glenn chipped in: “You start to see some of the darker side of it and the violence as well.
“It gives you a little bit of understanding of this world but it’s got a really good mix of comedy and pathos.”
The title perhaps says it all.
“I guess it can be lots of different things,” said Rosie. “Life’s hard, there’s the obvious hard… it’s open to interpretation.”
“Zee,” added Alison, “has resigned herself to the fact there’s not always a happy ever after. She’s never met a man she wanted to be with romantically.”
The play had a difficult birth. Alison said it was destined for the Edinburgh Fringe in 2020 but then Covid shut everything down.
When gatherings were allowed again with social distancing measures in place, she hired Cluny 2, in Newcastle’s Ouseburn Valley, and created a theatrical space in which to stage it.
One critic, seemingly a little surprised, called the play “intimate, humane and instantly relatable”.
Heartened by the response, Alison revived it in 2022 for a couple of performances at Laurels before taking it to London for a run at a theatre called The Vaults.
It was a success there too with sell-out performances.
“We had quite a lot of female groups in,” said Alison.
For this first proper run in Alison’s home theatre in Whitley Bay, she has tightened up the script, turning two acts into one.
A cast of four professional actors – the fourth is Steve Wraith who couldn’t be at this rehearsal – will be joined by some community performers, given a chance to appear because Laurels, as a charity, is committed to providing opportunities.
So while the strategically placed red lights lure punters to the theatre, HARD will shine a light on an aspect of contemporary life many of us never see.
“Things like this are probably happening everywhere in the country,” said Rod.
“And there’s not really much bad language and no actual nudity,” added Rosie.
“It’s cheeky but shouldn’t make anyone feel uncomfortable. And it will make you laugh.”
Anyone old enough to remember him might imagine Sid James’s trademark cackle making those red lights wobble.
HARD runs at Laurels, 212 Whitley Road, Whitley Bay, from June 17 to 27. Tickets from the Laurels website.