A double bill of plays present questions about the #MeToo movement and rape (Toxic), and the choice to be childfree (Hermione’s Dinner).
In the first, Toxic has a slow start introducing us to two architects, Julie and Patricia, who work in an office under a Weinstein type creepy boss, Ian Fletcher. He has a reputation for groping the women in the office and attempting sex when women visit him for late night work in his penthouse apartment. The question is – how do these women deal with him?
Stephen Connery Brown puts in a good performance as a creepy man, with soliloquies about his seduction techniques as he explains to the audience, ‘It is like a military exercise’ in which persistence pays off: 1 in 10 of his Tinder contacts ends up with sex. He says anything a woman wants to hear in order to reach his goal, but ‘some women need a degree of persuasion.’ He admits to having also taken pictures of the women he has had sex with, and making video recordings of them without their knowledge. His misogynistic ideas about what men are really like and what women really want make the audience feel, if not revolted, at least uncomfortable and ill disposed towards him. In a yoga class, similarly, the two women discuss their feelings on the same subject – what men are like, referring to the Dominique Pelicot case – all men are the same.
The point of the play shows how the women deal with the situation differently, and the end results which are perturbing (which I won’t give away here). Julie wants to get on in life, she is a junior architect wanting to be a senior architect. Though no innocent, she has grown up having to please a domineering father and is also set on giving Fletcher exactly what he wants to hear – pampering his masculinity with talk about other, inferior men, and her availability. She also makes it clear with technical, architect talk that she is worthy of promotion. In her soliloquy she attacks #MeToo for making women out to be victims when they should see themselves as free agents. Why should men be the ones who always make the approach? But is she also a victim of a misogynistic society, brow beaten into submitting because she is ambitious? Without giving the plot away, a rape case is involved. The real point is how wealthy men get away with manipulating women for sex, but how women have to work the system for their own ends. This is a classic #MeToo situation, but Ian Dixon Potter’s script makes it more even-handed.
The second play uses the same three actors to explore the subject of either having children or remaining childfree. The three guests discuss the situation over dinner where the hostess, Hermione, is never present as she has had to go off to see to her crying children. Sue wants to ‘start a family’ with Roger. Loud and opinionated dinner guest Caroline is keen to let everyone know how she hates children and is happy to be child free, she is ‘immune to the cult of cute.’ She accuses her friend Roger of having ‘fallen under the spell of a woman obsessed’ in the past, suggesting Sue is similar, as she is desperate enough to have undergone five IVF attempts (three on the NHS, Caroline points out) and feels her child-bearing years are soon to be at an end.
I have heard the arguments of my friends and others many times about the rights and wrongs of having children, the blaming – you are selfish, you are irresponsible – on both sides. The arguments for remaining childfree are well made, those for parenting less so, which makes this piece less satisfactory than the first.
The three actors do a good job of conveying different characters and play their parts well. Both of these works state their case, though they don’t do anything else: a social issue is presented and dramatised. It is done well, but it isn’t subtle.
Running time: 100 mins including 15 mins interval
Running : 17-28th June 2025 at 7.30pm
Cast: Francesca Anderson, Melanie Thompson, Stephen Connery Brown
Writer: Ian Dixon Potter
Director: Phoebe White
Lighting and Sound: Ryan Kingsbury