Seduction

It’s a perennial problem in plays where the actors are continually taking their clothes off: how do they get them back on, or off the stage cleanly between scenes? There’s a lot of that in Jack Heifner’s Seduction which squarely and fairly lives up to its title. Adapted from, Arthur Schnitzler’s fin-de-siècle Viennese play about a syphilis epidemic, La Ronde, this modern take on the merry-go-round of uncontrolled sex and carnal pleasure brings us bang up to date into the world of casual gay relationships. In Seduction, who comes around goes around.There’s no mention of AIDS here, and none about condoms either, but neither is there any moralising. Nevertheless the author clearly believes that we have forgotten the lessons of the eighties and are no longer practising safe sex, which may well be true in some spheres. I use the Royal ‘we’. The themes of Seduction, however, are much broader and deeper - the need for human contact and constant diversity, loneliness, faithlessness and deceit, the burning desire for affection.There’s the businessman (Simon Boughey) plying a teenager in his hotel bedroom with cream cake and white wine, while the lad reels off a list of the things he expects as presents - nothing grand, just an iPod, a Playstation and a pair of jeans.There’s the young student harmlessly seducing his college professor (Royce Ullah) in a hysterical vignette, the boy on the edge of premature ejaculation while the frightened academic fastidiously folds every item of his clothing, including his pants. This brought an unscripted ejaculation from Sue Pollard sitting in the front row.An actor (a deliciously fruity over-the-top performance from Stewart Dunseith) is having a relationship with the writer of the play he is appearing in, but is wooed by a Hollywood producer looking for a quick session on the casting couch. I would never recommend that actors do have affairs with writers or producers, or directors for that matter. The casting couch has hidden springs, and they are sharp.The casting, as is normally the case with Above The Stag productions, is first rate. Specially good here is newcomer Stanley Eldridge as the teenager, and as a rent boy who sets the play turning on its axis of sexual adventure. He exudes an air of vulnerability yet there’s a tough skin growing imperceptibly underneath. Michael Morrison has great fun with the character of the student, and of the fame-obsessed young theatre writer who thinks all should bow at his feet and be awed by his presence.The play ends, as it begins, with gentle choreography by Lee Proud which is quite seducing in its own right, the characters embarking on the dance of love and life and ultimately reflecting on loss and betrayal. Director Peter Bull whips it along and pulls the strings tight with an eye to every erotic possibility, while finding the maximum amount of tenderness and humour in every character and encounter. By the end, you care about their lives, which is surely what theatre is about. Unless you are stony-hearted or homophobic – and let’s face it you wouldn’t be above the Stag if you were - Seduction will seduce you.