{"id":1715,"date":"2019-02-12T22:01:31","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T22:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1715"},"modified":"2019-02-12T22:21:55","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T22:21:55","slug":"propwatch-the-strap-on-in-when-we-have-sufficiently-tortured-each-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2019\/02\/propwatch-the-strap-on-in-when-we-have-sufficiently-tortured-each-other.html","title":{"rendered":"Propwatch: the strap-on in When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

12 variations on a prop<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

1 garage<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is stuff you expect to find in a garage. A car (an Audi, registration FE13 MXP). Metal shelving, peg board. Strip lighting that tints everything stark and queasy. A toolbox. Gaffer tape. An Amazon delivery box (there\u2019s always a swoosh-marked Amazon box). They\u2019re all here in Vicki Mortimer\u2019s design. There\u2019s also a strap-on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2 set-up<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plot of Samuel Richardson\u2019s 1740 novel Pamela<\/em>, serious and sensational, is one of harsh power play and desire quiveringly deferred. Young servant Pamela resists her employer\u2019s extreme harassment; eventually (when \u2018we have sufficiently tortur\u2019d one another,\u2019 as he puts it) Mr B marries her. In Martin Crimp\u2019s contemporary response<\/a> (subtitle: 12 Variations on Samuel Richardson\u2019s Pamela)<\/em>, an implicitly longtime couple (Cate Blanchett and Stephen Dillane) use this dynamic as roleplay. Are they dressing things up, or laying them bare? And why the strap-on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3 marriage<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richardson\u2019s novel ends in marriage. Crimp\u2019s variations start\nwith marriage, and end with it too. Marriage, a channel for sexual desire.\nMarriage, a conduit for property, a mechanism for reproduction, a guarantor\nagainst social shame. Marriage, a place to be bored over time. Marriage ends the\nstory for Pamela and Mr B \u2013 after sufficient torture \u2013 but impels it for\nCrimp\u2019s couple, for whom the torture continues and must be retooled as conjugal\ndesire. Marriage has boxed in their desire, so they try to release it. It\u2019s\nhard work. Eventually, they reach for the strap-on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4 star<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had to enter a ballot even for the chance to buy a ticket for Sufficiently Tortured<\/em>. Cate Blanchett\u2019s casting sharpens a drama exploring how to parlay sexual hunger. We\u2019re avid to watch her look bored, and it only adds to the furrowed-brow perversity to see a supernova play it sordid in an Audi. As someone tweeted after the first preview, I JUST SAW CATE BLANCHETT KISS A WOMAN AND WALK AROUND THE STAGE HALF NAKED WHILE WEARING A STRAP ON WTF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5 script<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crimp\u2019s dialogue is super literate. Even if the couple\nhaven\u2019t studied their lines by heart, they apparently improvise within strict\nconfines. Long speeches, quickfire exchanges, the call and response of familiar\nantagonism. The published text doesn\u2019t prescribe their actions or delivery \u2013\nand doesn\u2019t mention a strap-on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Photos by Stephen Cummiskey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

6 escorts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watching a malcontented couple argue is almost as cringe\nas watching them flirt. No wonder the four people hired to assist this role\nplay spend most of the night hugging the garage walls. They often look concerned,\nbut they\u2019re pros, adept with costumes and scripted lines. None of them wears\nthe strap-on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7 writing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pamela scribble scribble scribbles: Richardson\u2019s novel is\na samizdat expression of selfhood. Pursued, confined, abused by her employer,\nstill she writes \u2013 hiding letters in her chamber, sewing them inside her\nclothes. Blanchett\u2019s character tap tap taps, and her laptop is a site of\nconflict. Dillane\u2019s character accesses it and demands she take dictation, but\nit\u2019s still an expression of her free mind. Unlike the strap-on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8 design<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vicki Mortimer\u2019s work with director Katie Mitchell maintains a stubborn realness amid its atmospheric density. Period furniture, real food, hard surfaces. Unflinching. The space for Sufficiently Tortured<\/em> is especially unyielding \u2013 all sharp metal corners, brutal floor, metal doors. Even when they sit in the aspirational car, the couple register the press of steering wheel and gear stick. Nothing is easy, easeful, soft. Certainly not the strap-on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

9 gender<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gender is performance, sure. Femininity and masculinity: constructs of culture, prisms (prisons, even) for the psyche. Here they furnish costumes, attitudes, roles in power play. Man wears a sheen-grey suit; woman a blonde wig, fishnets and maid\u2019s outfit. The couple swap roles throughout. Dillane drills into a thoroughbred intensity, while Blanchett makes both voices satirical. A brilliant career in the key of too much \u2013 gauche<\/a>, gangling<\/a>, fierce<\/a> \u2013 lets her heighten both girlish compliance and patriarchal swagger. Gender has never seemed more of a teasing masquerade. And then she takes the strap-on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

10 director<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Someone needs to let Katie Mitchell just make an actual porn film,\u2019 tweeted critic Helen Lewis<\/a>, \u2018get it out of her system.\u2019 Mitchell\u2019s concern with how men and women negotiate desire framed the sometimes humiliating transactions in La maladie de la mort<\/em>: it\u2019s a grim game in Sufficiently Tortured<\/em>. In both, encounters offer a chance to rewrite the rules of the sexual contract, or to tighten them. Here, there\u2019s also a strap-on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

11 wedding dress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blanchett\u2019s character is dressed, with luxuriant\ndeliberation, in bridal clobber. Dress and petticoat, veil and stockings, all\nwhite and lacy. Spotless. Maybe Pamela\u2019s ascension from prisoner to chatelaine,\nfrom prey to princess, wraps up her story, but not this woman\u2019s. You reach a\nhappy ending, then turn the page. Crimp\u2019s last scene is full of squabble, with\ndomestic chores \u2013 cleaning, catering, childcare \u2013 representing the buzzkill\nbattleground. Blanchett grasps for sexual release, domestic balance, even in\nher bridal rig. She buckles up the strap-on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

12 strap-on<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here it is. Incongruous but inevitable. Blanchett\u2019s\nbuddy, the end of the line. A cast of the phallic principle, propping up\ndesire. Prosaic, yet ready for anything you want to project on it. Behold, the\nstrap-on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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