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As something of a sexually unliberated prude myself you would have thought a play entitled Whore would be right up my street, seeing as I am, like most sexually unliberated prudes, obsessed with sex. Whore, however, left me slightly cold, asking myself rather staunchly,”isn’t there more to life than sex?’What about cake, walks in the country or computer games? A little while I later, & upon reflection I realised this may after all have been much of the point this play was trying to make. Sex, and our cultural obsession with sex, is a largely destructive force, perfectly represented in the lives of the play’s well-wrought characters. The message of the play was nobler and subtler than I had first assumed, perhaps, but the problem was that it was communicated in such a bombardment of snappy dialogue, energetic choreography, and occasionally confusing time-shifts that it felt like it had become the music video/youtube/disposable soundbite product it was apparently trying to parody, making it an often exhausting watch.

There was much to love however. I have all ready mentioned the honorable message (which may or may not have been intended) of whether our culture of sexual liberation has gone too far. There was also the choreography which, although overwhelming in it’s hyperactivity, was skillfully executed. There was little to fault in the performances, the dancing and the acting up a whirlwind of energy on stage; largely flawlessly. So too the script, though somewhat unrelenting and a little like being battered over the head by a thousand phallic fizzy pops, at times showed a lot of promise in an up-and-coming writer. It is often the case that young writers in their early works want to throw everything they have into one technicolour dream-pot that can sometimes be a little too raw and hard to digest, but given time I feel Reese Thompson will mature and mellow a little (but not too much) and be capable of spreading his message to a much broader demographic. In a recent interview with The Mumble, Reese gave us the raison d’etre of his most recent creation;

I was trying to capture a time during adolescence when we’re never more innocent and vulgar at the same time. As an adult, someone can call me a fag, a whore, or a chink, and (if there’s no threat of violence) it doesn’t bother me because I know who I am and whether what they’re saying is true or not. But when you’re a kid, you don’t know yourself as much, so being called names can be a bit more scarring. Also, when you’re a kid, everything is so high-stakes. At some point it all amounts to wanting to be a juvenile delinquent of some sort. Why is that?

In conclusion I’d say this play would appeal to a younger, hipper audience I have no doubt. Millennials & Twenty-Firsters nowadays seem to like everything rammed down the throat at a thousand-miles-a second and on that front the play definitely delivers. For a seventies child, I left feeling somewhat whip-lashed and craving a subtler, slower paced, more cerebral piece that might have communicated the same message without so many bells and fireworks.

Review by Steven Vickers