Theatre review: After Sex

Siofra Dromgoole's After Sex follows a casual couple navigating whether and how to make their relationship something more concrete, entirely through the conversations they have after sex - it's not a conceit the playwright sticks to entirely religiously, but it does offer a slightly new way of looking at a frequently-covered subject. We meet Her (Antonia Salib) and Him (Azan Ahmed) just after the first time they had sex (and a little bit during the second,) having met at work and decided to try something no-strings-attached. It's a short play, but it would be even shorter if they didn't find that strings were attaching themselves pretty quickly whether they like it or not, and pretty soon they're both betraying the fact that part of them is already imagining a longer-term future together; usually when they're most enthusiastically trying to protest to the contrary.

Although there are a couple of what are technically sex scenes, these are generally done in abstract ways - little touching, mostly done through sound and dialogue, and the white vests stay on as firmly as if this was a gay scene in Hollyoaks.

The effect is to focus on the fact that this isn't a play about physical intimacy, but about the way it can make people more vulnerable afterwards. Probably the most interesting twist in the way Dromgoole looks at the subject is through fetishes - the pair have a recurring game where one (usually Her) will describe a fairly elaborate scenario and the other will have to guess whether it's a kink or a fear of theirs. The idea of the two things being closer than they might seem feeds into a running subplot about Her's previous relationship having ended when she caught her ex with his male best friend; the question is raised if she's partly with the bisexual Him because on some level she's tempting fate for it to be repeated.

Ahmed and Salib are good, although they don't exactly sizzle with chemistry - possibly the effect of the show dancing around the couple's physical intimacy so much. Stylistically the show's experimenting with ways of telling the story can feel like incosistency as well - an early idea of having the characters give monologues of their inner thoughts during sex is dropped, while Izzy Parriss' production experiments with movement and dance a bit too late for it to feel integrated. So not a show that entirely catches fire, but some of its complexity means there's interesting ideas to mull over and unlock even after the performance is over.

After Sex by Siofra Dromgoole is booking until the 3rd of August at Arcola Studio 2.

Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Jake Bush.