REVIEW: HARD, Laurels Theatre, Whitley Bay
Why sex work can be hard graft
You had to feel for Alison Stanley, seemingly vacuum-packed in a shiny black suit on an unforgivingly warm and airless night.
Whitley Bay has yearned for hot weather over the years, all the better for filling the guest houses and shifting the ice-creams.
But the punters catered for in HARD, Alison’s play about the sex industry, have a different set of demands.
Wide-ranging, to be fair, but different.
They might like to dress up as a burglar and be chased around by angry ladies in police uniforms. (Outside fiction, I imagine there’s no set dress code for burglary but the angry pursuit is the thing.)
Or they might have a foot fetish to satisfy – or enjoy being locked in a cupboard and yelled at when having the temerity to make a humble request.
There are, of course, those who turn to the sex industry to have urges satisfied more conventionally.
We meet some of those, too – right from the start, in fact, when Zee, played by Alison in that skin-tight suit, is plying her trade while explaining it to us with yawns and eye-rolling.
Possibly feigned boredom came with this particular package but since her client (played by Cameron Fraser who shares punter roles with Steve Wraith and Bob Smeaton) was pumping away out of eye line, it seemed authentic.
And, yes, you really felt for her in the tiny and intimate (oh so intimate) space that is the Laurels theatre on a night with the temperature rising. Sex work might be hard (or HARD) graft but acting’s no picnic either sometimes.
Alison’s play had a short North East run a few years ago and was also staged in London, but it returns having been re-worked, so gone is the interval which on that balmy opening night would have seen a rush for the bar.
It’s the story of Zee who gets sacked from a boring job and finds easier money manning a sex chat line… which leads her into other, shall we say less distanced, areas of the business.
It’s very educational. Well, it was for me. What Zee does with a banana is probably not what you think.
And since the real-life memoir of a North East sex worker provided part of the inspiration for the play, we can take it as gospel.
There are giggles of the end-of-the-pier variety – “Oh, my word!” – but there’s serious stuff, too. Zee has to work to look after her dad (Rod Glenn with a scowl and a stick) who has had a stroke.
He’s really not a nice man and even when they come to know each other better – admittedly in testing circumstances – there’s no real thawing in their relationship.
And the ever present threat of violence to women ‘on the game’, as it used to be put, isn’t glossed over. Zee’s friend and mentor Rachel (Rosie Fox, busy throughout) pays a high price for putting trust in a client.
HARD will be a hard watch for some but there was plenty of laughter on opening night. And while the sex will be the talking point (and it’s all done, as the late Kenny Everett would have said, in the best possible taste. Well, mostly), it’s gritty rather than glamorous.
Sex work, as you’ll see, could be called a service industry. People get old, might not have command of their faculties, become lonely. For some, a little transactional intimacy is key to getting by.
HARD runs until June 27. Tickets from the Laurels website.