thu 28/03/2024

Seduction: An Erotic Black Comedy, Above the Stag Theatre | reviews, news & interviews

Seduction: An Erotic Black Comedy, Above the Stag Theatre

Seduction: An Erotic Black Comedy, Above the Stag Theatre

Jack Heifner's all-male version of La Ronde is short on wit and good acting

Show a little tenderness: Simon Boughey as the Movie Producer and Stanley Eldridge as the Rent Boy in the final scene of SeductionDerek Drescher

Have you ever found onstage nudity sexy? Unlike a friend of mine, for whom the epiphany of the National Theatre's Bent was the giant member in the first five minutes, I honestly haven't. Sensuous, once, in the Maly Theatre's skinny-dipping Platonov, and even sweet, in ATS Theatre's strong adaptation of Forster's Maurice. Since the theatre's Artistic Director Peter Bull, evidently a good guy, was staging this, Jack Heifner's all-male updating of Schnitzler's La Ronde, I'd hoped that some good things would come of it. Unfortunately, for me at any rate, Seduction was neither erotic, very funny nor very dark (until you read the programme note for a reason why).

Have you ever found onstage nudity sexy? Unlike a friend of mine, for whom the epiphany of the National Theatre's Bent was the giant member in the first five minutes, I honestly haven't. Sensuous, once, in the Maly Theatre's skinny-dipping Platonov, and even sweet, in ATS Theatre's strong adaptation of Forster's Maurice. Since the theatre's Artistic Director Peter Bull, evidently a good guy, was staging this, Jack Heifner's all-male updating of Schnitzler's La Ronde, I'd hoped that some good things would come of it. Unfortunately, for me at any rate, Seduction was neither erotic, very funny nor very dark (until you read the programme note for a reason why).

The uncertain tone of some of the acting hardly spells out the playwright's intended morality about careless, condomless sex in contemporary London

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