Writer: Natasha Sutton Williams
Having to mime making love to a fatberg is not an envious task. For that alone, Natasha Sutton Williams should be applauded. But it’s one thing having to undertake such a performative challenge and another thing having to watch it.
Using the tenuous link of sewers and drainpipes, Sutton Williams brings three stories together whose only connection is that they are all disgusting. The first man, obsessed with experiencing menstruation, finds himself in a madwoman’s house who casually sips menstrual blood and gleefully admits to injecting tomatoes with it across multiple London supermarkets.
The second, a woman who happily tells a stranger about the time a cat failed to bring her to orgasm via cunnilingus. And the third, the purported host for the evening, squeaky Gary Strange who is charged with destroying fatbergs below the city and finds himself falling in love with one.
This feels more like an exercise in taking an idea to its very limit in what the audience can withstand without retching. Disgusting the audience is a powerful and useful tool, but it does have to serve a purpose, and in this case, the only message to come out of these stories is Sutton Williams’ ability to entirely commit, standing alone on stage with only a wig and a string of pearls for props.
What is one to take, for example, from a man who decides to douse himself in menstrual blood and allows a woman to chop off his testicles? Granted, the fact that she’s able to make the audience recoil with only an occasional red light to denote bodily fluids is impressive. If this were an audition, she’d be hired in a minute. Indeed, if this were an experiment in character development, she would come top of the class. A talented, physical and intense performer who would do well to collaborate on her next writing project.
Runs until 18 February 2023
