Punts

An upper-middle class couple employ the services of a sex-worker to take the virginity of their 25-year old son with learning difficulties.

That’s the plot of Sarah Page’s Punts, which just opened at Theatre503. And what’s weird is I kind of liked it. Stay with me.

I’m going to start with the positives. It’s design by Amelia Jane Hankin is properly good: these glowing neon tubes gesturing simultaneously towards a bay window in an upscale London home, a sort of seventies Americana neon altar, and a garish strip club. They glow in different colours, casting erotic shadows on the characters as they strut offstage in between scenes, as this synthy sound design by Owen Crouch pumps out at you. I’ve made all of that sound cooler than it was, and it certainly does take a lot of cues from Kuleshov’s previous production at 503, BU21, but it was pretty neatly constructed (in a space where I normally see quite naff design altogether).

The play as textual object is really well-structured: satisfying scenes galore, chockful of subtext and properly interesting argument, only slightly losing its way in the latter half. It pretty much never – I think this is testament, as ever, to actor, writer, and director – lapses into preachiness or lyricism, even as a housewife character has an argument with a sex worker about their different life-choices *cue Billington applause* – and all the characters get moments to really make big choices and disclose themselves and their complex motivations. And it’s really funny: kudos to all the cast and the director whose nuanced performances allow moments of silence to be palpably clear while also offering genuinely insightful interactions between people in a tight spot – GOD, PLEASE JUST DON’T.

So, I enjoyed it. That’s that. I did. More than a lot of shows I’ve seen at 503. It was dramatic and lived in the real-world, in a “now” I recognise (I’m still reeling from Escape the Scaffold at 503, still one of the weirdest “contemporary” plays I’ve ever seen) and I enjoyed the characters and the story seemed well-told.

But, well, and.

There’s a few problems, aren’t there. As ever. And as ever, they are ideological *snore*. Feel free to switch off now.

Even if I sidle past (as the play does) the fact of a sex worker sleeping with a man with learning difficulties, who does not seem very much to want to have sex, I think you’re left with a political conundrum that contrives a few too many "haha that’s funny moments" not to leave a bit of a sour taste in the mouth. Or at least my fairly flawed, subjective mouth.

And then, and I know after that this seems small fry, there’s the problem of representation. Because this play’s politics are, under the surface, a bit grubby.

The white family onstage are very upper-middle-class-and-don’t-we-get-plenty-of-sub-Ayckbourn-gags-about-it (“we have lots of teas” stuck in the craw).

That’s fine. Sure.

But the barrister father is a bit of a hardworking nice bloke, who might really want to get it off with the younger prostitute; the housewife mother is a bit of a list-making obsessive, who is jealous of the younger, sexualised woman’s presence. The sex worker character’s real overarching dream is to have a husband to take care of her (or to earn enough money to be a care worker). And the son’s dream is to get a girlfriend and be like the other boys.

The final image *spoiler* is of the father asking the mother out on a date, while the sex worker has buggered off to try to go and be a carer and the son has gone to the rugby club alone.

So, a complex play about lots of stuff, is, at the structural level, about the restitution of the traditional family (women as care-givers, men as sexy, strong sexmen). Which is, I think, for unexpected reasons considering all the traps the play could have fallen into (representation of sex workers AND learning differences in one play), why this play is niggling my brain.

Anyway, good performances nonetheless and I’d really recommend going, if only to tell me I’m wrong and how.

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