Sex and death are the themes of this 90-minute play by the late Stephen Clark. The problem is that they are virtually the only topics discussed in a work written as a vehicle for Julian Clary. Although Clark, who won an Olivier award for his lyrics for the reworked Martin Guerre, had an undoubted way with words, this particular piece strikes me as morbid and exploitative.
We first see Clary’s Michael in his kitchen, coolly preparing pasta for an expected dinner guest. As he does so, he explores in rhyme urban myths about necrophilia involving subjects ranging from Rasputin to Marilyn Monroe. (Later, he somewhat ludicrously expands on his theme to include the archaeologist Howard Carter, who is considered a sexual predator because of his enthusiasm for the tomb of Tutankhamun.) But the drama gets under way with the arrival of the cockily assertive Tim, whom Michael had encountered that day in a pub. As a kitchen knife is freely brandished and the two men engage in mutual confessions, you are never quite sure whether Michael’s plan is to seduce or kill his guest.
Behind the play lurks the idea that Michael, abused in childhood, is terrified of close personal encounters. That leads, however, to nonsensical statements such as Tim’s claim that “killing someone is the most intimate thing you can do with them.” The play also teases us with the idea that we are about to witness acts of sex or violence. When a naked Tim poses in front of a relief of Leonardo’s image of Vitruvian Man, it looks very much like the former; when a knife hovers ominously around one of the two men’s genitalia, it implies the latter. Either way, the impression is that we are being pointlessly titillated.
Clary is at his best in the opening monologue where, slicing and dicing vegetables, he exhibits an economy of movement that constitutes physical grace. Although he handles the character’s later Oedipal narrative with some skill, not even he can disguise the fact that it feels like the author’s desperate attempt to shock and amaze. James Nelson-Joyce lends the dinner guest a frantic ebullience and Christopher Renshaw directs capably. But the play itself, which feels like the spawn of Jean Genet and Stephen King, is purgatorial without ever being truly cathartic.
• At Trafalgar Studios, London, until 28 October. Box office: 0844-871 7632.
