By James Hadley in London

The Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, North London, has one of the most current events engaged programmes of any London venue, under its longterm artistic director Nicholas Kent. An appropriate venue then for the first London run of Simon Stephens' play 'Pornography' - the first major script to deal with the 7/7 bombings.

 
This is the first of Stephens' plays that I've seen. I remember him making quite an impact when Playmarket brought him over to New Zealand a few years ago, just as he was becoming a hot property at the Royal Court Theatre, to do workshops with emerging NZ playwrights. Since then he's had work produced at the National Theatre - surely a sign of having 'made it', alongside critically acclaimed work in smaller venues like the Bush Theatre, and commissions from large venues like the Lyric Hammersmith.
 
'Pornography' was written specifically for a Berlin production, perhaps because it still felt too soon to deal with such a sensitive subject matter in the UK, though it was soon to be presented by Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company and the Traverse Theatre at last year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It had enough of a buzz about it to be sold out when I tried to see it there, but also received some mixed comments for its portrayal of one of the bombers onstage. I have to admit I went to the show - a remount of the Edinburgh production, directed by Nicholas Kent - expecting dramatic eye-witness accounts and deafening bomb blasts. Instead, Stephens' response is a far subtler portrait of London through the lives of eight Londoners over that fateful week.
 
The eight characters live their unconnected lives as if carelessly littered across the sparse stage. They co-exist obliviously onstage in much the same manner that London's masses co-exist obliviously to each other. The bomber turns out to be the only individual directly affected by the bombings, but there are suggestions that the ripples of after-impact are what gently shift people's awareness. While it's clearly brave to directly represent the bomber, Stephens pulls no punches - it's a measured, matter-of-fact portrayal of someone totally focussed on carrying out a detailed premeditated plan, with nervousness and irritations which humanise him as much as his observations of a society he condemns ultimately distance us from him. But his story holds little drama in itself.

For anguish, we must turn to the brother and sister in their thirties who, reunited after years apart, embark on an incestuous affair; or to the racist schoolboy venting his rage over the teacher who spurns his crush on her. A seemingly random multi-cultural cross-section of Londoners also includes a career mum juggling work and domestic pressures, a student teacher catching up with an old (and older) teacher from her previous course, and an isolated older woman. This last character - a stand-out performance by Sheila Reid - seems most representative of London itself. She talks of staring out of her window for hours on end, commenting that you eventually start to hallucinate. Like many Londoners, she wanders the streets as if invisible, and, her husband having died years before, it's as if she's so starved of human contact that it terrifies her.
 
The emotional climax of the play comes when, public transport having been cancelled in the wake of the bombings, this older woman (significantly, all of the characters are nameless, adding to the impersonal nature of their society) walks all the way home to suburbia from central London. Exhausted, she smells someone barbequing chicken and it smells so good that she knocks on their door and asks if she can have some. A minor event in the wider scheme of things, yet it's presented as a break-through gesture of essential humanity, a direct repercussion of the wider tragedies of the day.
 
Other characters' lives seem all but untouched. London winning the Olympic bid is just a passing topic of breakfast conversation, and the bombings a passing knock to individual confidence and security. The young teacher reconnecting with her ex-professor admits a student crush on him, only to be repulsed when he later reveals his vulnerable need for human contact. It's a recurring theme in this portrait of Londoners - the repressed need for human contact is more fundamental and all-consuming than current events in most of their lives. Ironic then, that the one mutually loving couple in the play are framed as a sinful aberration by society for being siblings.
 
Symbolically, the bomber character makes fleeting physical contact with each of the other characters at various points in the piece. Handing them a drink as they speak, or brushing against their arm in passing - the kind of insignificant contact typical of London society. Similarly the set is an unfriendly industrial aesthetic - exposed wires, exposed walls of the stage, dusty and dark emptiness. Most of the characters speak only in direct address to the audience; uncensored subjective observations, as if talking to themself out of loneliness. It's a damning comment on the lack of meaningful contact throughout much of London society. Perhaps if it weren't so easy to slip through the gaping cracks of London society, terrorists wouldn't pass unnoticed among us as easily.
 
Stephens makes no over comment on anything. The best aspect of his writing is the restraint he shows in trusting his audience to consider and respond to his provocations. The older woman watches pornography on television and comments dispassionately on the weariness on the actors' faces as they go through the motions, waiting to reach a climax. Is this the closest she herself can hope to get to human intimacy I wonder? It's a tellingly rich image that works on several levels - most obviously the wryly humourous.

A colleague of mine suggested the pornography of the title refers not to sex but to moments of explicit disconnection and loneliness. The schoolboy burning a cigarette into his arm as he ejaculates wounded pride in a string of expletives about the woman who's spurned him. The insensitive, abusive anger of the career mum's boss, which drives her to professional betrayal through leaking a confidential document. And yes, the ability of the bomber to abstract all of society around him into the corrupt object of his loathing.
 
It's thoughtful, subtle writing that continues to evolve in your mind days after seeing it, rather than concentrating its energies on some immediate shocking impact that might lack longer resonance. No wonder Stephens seems to have a string of writing commissions heading towards production.

Related Link:

The Tricycle Theatre