Theatre review: Party Scene explores the dangerous combination of sex and drugs
Party Scene at Cork Midsummer Festival: Liam Bixby, Ryan O'Neill, Anderson de Souza, and Matthew Morris. Picture: Jed Niezgoda
★★★☆☆
Everything is out in the open at Party Scene: Chemsex, Community and Crisis, the latest production from Dublin theatre company ThisIsPopBaby and an eagerly anticipated premiere for Cork Midsummer Festival.
This is theatre laid bare: no stage, no curtain, just the dark, dusty, bare surrounds of a former warehouse at Cork’s Marina Market where the air is dense with dry ice and a strip of neon delineates the performance space.
It is an inspired setting for the dance-theatre piece, which takes a deep and visceral dive into the impact of the chemsex scene — using drugs such as GHB (‘G’) or crystal meth, to enhance the sexual experience — on some people in the gay community.
The show is underpinned by a pure physicality admirably embodied by the four performers — Anderson de Souza, Liam Bixby, Ryan O’Neill, and Matthew Morris. The choreography - by Philip Connaughton, who created the show with Phillip McMahon - is key in capturing the chemsex experience, from the sense of anticipation, joy and inhibition, to the almost imperceptible facial tics as giggly mania gives way to oblivion and the inevitable comedown.
The heady sensuality of the sexual encounters is executed with skilful abstraction as the men lift, hold, and melt into each other, then push each other away.
The physical and emotional cruelty inflicted on others in the pursuit of pleasure is not shied away from either. In one scene, a pulsating dance beat gives way to the disconcerting strains of the Twilight Zone theme as one of the men desperately tries to figure out what happened when he blacked out.
A series of crackly voice messages from concerned friends and family relayed over the sound system works well as a framing device but some amplification on the performers would have prevented snatches of dialogue being lost in movement.
While the nameless protagonists and disjointed narrative mirror the often chaotic and impersonal nature of the chemsex scene, this also leads at times to a strange inertia and lack of coherence which detracts somewhat from the overall performance.
However, there are powerful and affecting moments throughout and the universal theme of our need for intimacy and connection is well conveyed. The show also prompts the audience to ask some questions of themselves. As one of the performers archly observes: “I’m okay with what I see in the mirror, what about you?”
- Final performance of Party Scene at the Marina Market, Cork, on Friday, June 17; followed by a run at Project Arts Centre, Dublin, June 22-July 2
