With a disabled protagonist entrance and centre, Animal does loads of good work at Park Theatre however is finally let down by its writing
“I want to know what it feels like”
Written by Jon Bradfield from a narrative by Bradfield and Josh Hepple, there’s clearly stirringly nice intent behind Animal. A play unafraid to centre a disabled protagonist who’s spiky and tough in addition to being humorous and charming when he needs to be. A play that seeks to symbolize only a smidgen of the genuine actuality of homosexual hookups through Grindr. It’s additionally a play that references Ray Cooney, solely by point out moderately than in spirit fortunately!
In some methods, it achieves all that. David is a 25-year-old homosexual man with cerebral palsy extreme sufficient that he can’t eat, drink or bathe by himself. He’s additionally a virgin who has by no means been kissed and he’s decided to rectify this, come hell or highwater. And so he downloads the app and enters the unforgiving world of Grindr which generally is a minefield even for those who’re drop lifeless attractive, by no means thoughts in a wheelchair. David has the bonus of being well-hung although, he simply wants somebody to take the pics for him…
Bronagh Lagan’s manufacturing captures an important sense of what expertise has achieved to the artwork of hooking up, aided by good projection work from Matt Powell. The means language is degraded to a collection of ‘Hi’s’, the convenience with which messages are blocked or ignored, the mini-dramas that may play out when somebody finally does flip up as need and desperation come into play. Refracted by the prism of somebody dwelling with the situation CP, it’s eye-opening and tragicomic in equal measure and extra broadly, a understanding indictment of the obsession for thus many with dick measurement.
David’s travails are contrasted with the opposite relationships in his life, most notably together with his greatest buddy and live-in assistant Jill – Christopher John-Slater and Amy Loughton demonstrating nice chemistry collectively, comedy of various levels of sharpness bouncing entertainingly between them. And as each events discover their means in direction of potential romantic relationships, there’s one thing fascinating within the wrestle to reposition their roles given the complexity of their co-dependent connection.
But regardless of all of this, one thing about Animal by no means actually roars into life dramatically, the tangents it takes not often igniting the advanced debates it brushes previous. Notions of self-loathing, the stress between bodily and emotional dependency on the non-disabled for the disabled, the bitterness of betrayal. Most manifestly, a scene of sexual assault is launched then deserted with jaw-dropping glibness, it’s a painfully terrible and irresponsible second which mars a lot of that good preliminary intent.