PORNSICK OFFSETS HEAVINESS WITH HILARITY, AND HIGHLIGHTS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN – EVEN IF THE CHARACTERS ARE NOT

By Rachel Cameron-Potter | Stuff Rachel Says ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Press Invite

In the centre of a darkened room, four ghosts lie in a heap on a bed. Empty liquor bottles and martini glasses litter the floor around them, and beneath the sleepers, a stained bed sheet spills out over the corners of the mattress. Written and directed by Avery McNeilly for Camden Fringe festival, ‘Pornsick’ tells the story of four ghosts who, trapped between life and death in a space that could be anywhere or nowhere, decide to fight a hangover by staying drunk forever.

Everything about the play is rooted in liminality. The genderless ghosts, performed by non-binary and transgender actors, wear white, timeless clothing, and speak in an archaic manner that isn’t tied to any particular time period. In this liminal plane, there’s nothing stopping these beings existing in various states of drunkenness, letting the days blur into a booze-tinged haze – until one day, The Crocodile (H Young) declares they have “something to say.”

Instead of asking their bedfellow to speak their mind, The Crocodile is met with hostility from an incredibly hungover Redleg (Alan Bea). It doesn’t take long before the two are bickering across the bed in a childish manner before Peach (Matias Hazel Wood) intervenes, shielding the awkward and innocent Croc from the feisty, capricious Redleg.

Soon enough, their bickering awakens Lovely (Sym Vis), who declares that the group has, over time, drifted apart. To remedy this, the group must re-learn to be intimate with one another, although before long another bottle is opened and the quest for intimacy turns into another drinking session.

Only this time, The Crocodile isn’t drinking. True to their timid, awkward nature, they’ve only been pretending to drink – it’s only when they’re discovered that they finally share what’s been on their mind since the start of the play.

From here, the characters are forced to face up to who they are and how they relate to one another, before deciding whether to go their separate ways in directions they themselves don’t even know.

While a little hard to follow at points, McNeilly’s script was beautifully written, rife with introspective monologues on love and hatred, sex and death – pretty profound insights from those who are neither alive nor dead. Alan Bea’s monologue in particular stood out, as the hot-headed Redleg reveals that their destructive nature stems from the belief that “If I can’t have it, no one can,” an embodiment of how hurt people (or ghosts), hurt people.

Despite the weight of these topics, the play never felt too heavy, with the tension of these reflective periods diffused by hilarious and heart-warming displays of friendship. We see the characters go from cuddling on the bed to chasing each other in fits of rage, before sharing a (herbal) cigarette outside as they reminisce on the afterlife they’ve shared together so far.

As for the acting, the cast were phenomenal. Each actor performed with vivacity and verve, portraying a spectrum of emotions on stage while seamlessly delivering some pretty difficult lines. Notable performances came from Alan Bea and H Young, whose electric on-stage chemistry perfectly portrayed the love-hate relationship between the fiery Redleg and the delicate Crocodile.

In stripping away the constraints of time, space and gender, Pornsick pulls us into the void and forces us to question who we are and how we relate to one another outside of societal conventions. Both vibrant and vulnerable, this play offsets heaviness with hilarity, and highlights what it means to be human – even if the characters are not.

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