Southwark Playhouse – until 25 February 2023
Reviewed by Claire Roderick
4****
Kim Davies’s play transfers the heartless powerplays of Strindberg’s Miss Julie to 2012 New York. During a BDSM party, Julie (Meaghan Martin) finds John (Oli Higginson) smoking in the kitchen. The master/servant dynamic of Julie’s father and John becomes world famous photographer/intern – which isn’t even a proper job according to Julie. They know of each other, and tentatively dance around each other to discover more.
John is a regular on the BDSM scene but this is Julie’s first party, and he begins explaining how things work, and finding out what she likes in an initially reassuring, but increasingly patronising way as he finds out she wants to be dominated. His tales of what other men have done to women without their consent, and how he would never do that begin to sound more and more hollow after he reveals what he likes to do – and at this point the power starts to shift as well. As the pair begin a “scene” it becomes more and more unclear what is real and what is an act as the dynamics shift and swirl like the black sand on stage. Throughout the play, John is repeatedly interrupted by phone calls from Julie’s dad with demands to go to the studio, and this realisation that John is in reality as powerless as Julie wants to be made to feel allows Julie to let rip with a verbal assault that feels as damaging as John’s last power play – a truly shocking sequence that is choreographed and performed with shuddering intensity. Kim Davies’s writing is sharp and funny, leaving so much unsaid for the actors and audience to interpret. Directors Polina Kalinina and Júlia Levai ramp up the intensity and the in the round staging is exquisite as the characters manipulate and manoeuvre around each other.
The blurred lines of consent in this encounter raise lots of questions without resolution, and the bleak ending leaves a nasty taste in your mouth, but rightly so. There is very little physical contact in the play, instead the pit of black sand in which the actors perform is used in haunting imagery. Trickling handfuls of sand represent smoking cigarettes and the sand is used both gently and violently as the pair play. Sami Fendall’s design is stark and cold, with Rajiv Pattani’s lighting changing erratically to signal the discomfort and danger unfolding in the kitchen. Higginson and Martin are exceptional – he switches between lithe prowling and puppy dog confusion in an instant, but always keeps John a little off kilter, especially when he is supposedly reassuring Julie. Martin raises Julie from what could have been a stereotypical bored trust fund brat into a complex character full of contradictions who appears to just need to feel something… anything – and her enigmatic expression in her final moments onstage will leave you wondering.
Slick and darkly funny, Smoke is an intriguing and intelligent play with two brilliant performances. Grab a ticket while you can.