5 hours ago
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The stage is dressed for an interrogation, a testimony or perhaps a press conference: microphones jostle around a desk. The lights flicker and we hear a few bars of the 60s hit You Don’t Own Me: “Don’t tell me what to do / Don’t tell me what to say.”
Enter stage left: a body zipped inside a clothes bag, wriggling then rolling along the floor. Emerging from this chrysalis is Josie Dale-Jones, here to revisit the high-profile cancellation mid-rehearsals of her company’s sex education theatre production three years ago. Part autobiography and part fiction, this inquest – previously staged at the Edinburgh festival where it won a Fringe First award – explores events before, after and in the eye of the storm surrounding The Family Sex Show. Thousands signed a petition against it, one of its venues received a bomb threat and Dale-Jones was branded sick, irresponsible – and much worse – for exploring material deemed “inappropriate” for young audiences.
While this opening strikes a note of defiance, Dale-Jones also issues mea culpas in a production with text by Abbi Greenland and directed by Rachel Lemon. One section features a list of mistakes made with the show and its supporting material online. Another section itemises inaccurate assumptions and claims made against the show, contrary to its planned content. There are many eye-watering quotes from abusive emails received by the theatre-maker.
It is a difficult subject to tackle in more ways than one as at the centre of this production is something intangible: a performance shut down before it existed. “The idea of the show” is what was dangerous, says Dale-Jones, who expected it to be controversial – as, you may assume, did Arts Council England, which funded her company. But the institution is depicted as being equally ambushed by the backlash. “I wanted you to be less scared than I was,” she tells them.
Dale-Jones discusses her experience of sex education (condoms on courgettes, tampons in Ribena) and why she wanted to equip children for “healthy and functional relationships”. There could be more nuance here about how and when children should learn about sex and what the current curriculum is doing (a snippet from PMQs is underpowered). In one section she poses like a sculpture in a gallery as a contrast is drawn between nudity on stage and in visual art – one of several scenes where you wish the perspective was wider. Censorship, freedom of expression, failure of leadership and a climate of fear in the arts are all live issues in the wake of A Midsummer Night’s Dream being cancelled at Manchester’s Royal Exchange. Here, the focus is usually micro not macro.
But it makes for a bold, nightmarish and surprisingly humorous hour of artistic self-assessment, with a striking lighting design by James Mackenzie. A late rug pull featuring co-star Laurence Baker weakens the impact of a memoir that is often imaginatively rendered – the script at one point continually glitching on the word “safe” – with an edge of jeopardy akin to when Richard Gadd first performed Baby Reindeer. And the startling opening scene is darkly recast in a conclusion that captures her still fluctuating responses to the furore.
