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Life Would Be Pretty Dull Without Sex, Raves and MDMA

 
Richard Beck Review by Richard Beck 4 Published: 18 Aug 2025 theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall Show Dates: 1 Aug 2025-16 Aug 2025

Release your grief and conquer cancer through pulsating discos and wild workouts in an endless round of partying. That’s the message of Sarah Asante Gregory and performer/co-writer Bex Wall in Life Would Be Pretty Dull Without Sex, Raves and MDMA at theSpace at Surgeons Hall.

A raw and brutally honest dive into life as it is

If that sounds wild and outrageous, it’s because it is. As Wall says: “This story comes from somewhere real. It’s about the weird, unspoken places grief takes us – and how music, madness and human connection can carry us through.” Gregory adds: “We’ve created something raw and ridiculous, but also deeply human. It’s not about tidy answers – it’s about being seen in the mess.”

Wall’s slick, psychedelic, leotard-clothed body gyrates to the sounds of the 90s, seemingly possessed of more energy than she knows what to do with. She tries to expend it all in this 50-minute romp, but by the end there is a sense she could do it all again. Her powerhouse performance is unrelenting as we tour raves around Europe, but nowhere can she escape the two fiends that fill her mind.

A frenetic lifestyle is precisely what her deceased brother would have wanted her to embrace. It was exactly how he lived and died – in a drug-fuelled, alcohol-driven, sex-ridden excess of partying and clubbing. Her own end might come differently, however, given her breast cancer diagnosis. For her, life is a battle on two fronts, as she lives with a duo of demons who are as likely to attack her head on the dancefloor as they are in the tranquillity of her home or on a lonely walk.

The joy of this highly personal show is its life-affirming message and refusal to become self-centred or self-indulgent. There is no navel-gazing morbidity, but rather a challenge to defy the odds. Her dance may be physically on the floor, but mentally it hip-hops between letting go and holding on, as her head grapples with the complexities of grief, the guilt of survival and the joy that can come from embracing both.

The show is full of contradictions: of finding alternative answers to a situation; of looking tragedy and misfortune in the face and standing up to them; of defying the obvious. This is a raw and brutally honest dive into life as it is, legal or not. Wall wears her heart on her sleeve, gives it everything and dares you to join her in the dance of life and death.

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The Blurb:

Sex? Yes, please. Raves? Absolutely. MDMA? A dabble. Illegal raves find me high, staring at vaginas in abandoned museums. Meet Bex, a fortysomething woman struggling with expectations. A twist of fate, she rejects safe and abandons herself to life. Consequences be damned, embracing a reality that’s messy, exhilarating, cruel and wild. Showing you the world through her imperfect lens of love, loss and heartbreak, so you can make the leap and live intentionally – whatever that means. A rip-roaring, naughty, funny tale that will have you laughing into the dark.