Porn Crackers
Upstairs at the Gatehouse
★★★★★

PORN CRACKERS is a short, sharp piece with a minimal set and only two characters on stage. But it embraces the world.

This involves not just the practicalities of pornography as the title asserts, but the impact on all of us of pornography’s corrupting power and demeaning presence. In the era of Jeffrey Epstein, grooming gangs, child abuse and open internet access to depravity of all kinds, nothing could be more topical.

Not that this is any way a preachy, moralistic treatise… far from it. Nor is it in any way graphic. Instead, this is a play that is character-driven, full of lightness and humour as well as serious thought, and with an ultimate emphasis on how we profoundly think and feel, rather than on the simple diversion of what we say and do.  

Playwright Jan Woolf draws on her own experience as a film censor in 2001 when she was called upon to categorise cinematic releases in the most dispassionate way without emotional investment or imaginative indulgence.

In the play, Sarah fulfils the playwright’s role. Employed back at the millennium by the “National Film Examining Board,” she assigns classification categories to a range of films from the innocent Teletubbies, through the Lord of the Rings, to dark and dangerous adult films. Her colleague, Charlie — also her boss — is today assessing her performance to sign off her probationary period and determine her future. Sarah becomes increasingly disturbed by what she sees and Charlie reminds her that she must disengage the imagination and stick to the “quantifiable.” In other words, get on with the job and don’t ask difficult questions.

All is of course complicated by Sarah and Charlie finding themselves in the early stages of an affair, a situation shared vividly with us in the first scene and etching sharply into our brains the stark difference between real feelings and relationships and the brutal – if titillating – abuse of some people’s bodies by others.

At first, as they watch the films, there is banter between them and a shared sense of purpose. By the end, Sarah is convinced that what she sees is non-consensual exploitation, while Charlie is thrown into an insecurity seemingly new to him. For both, intimacy gradually takes on a whole new meaning.

What is outstanding in this play is not just Jan Woolf’s finger-on-the-pulse thesis and precise and fearless dialogue, nor director Aidan Casey’s skilled direction, nor the superbly integrated sound from Tim Solomons; it’s the in-depth characterisation of the two actors, the drama being enacted through the detailed facial expressions of the cast second by second. Miranda Colmans (Sarah) combines soft girlishness with steely feminism to excellent effect while Douglas Clarke-Wood (Charlie) immaculately personifies the easy and confident male slowly destabilised by a new and upsetting perception. It’s riveting for an audience and gripping to the last.

Brave of the theatre to put on such a short piece (well under an hour) and we find ourselves wanting more. But it’s a little gem with gigantic significance.

Runs until November 23. Box office: 020 8340 3488, upstairsatthegatehouse.com