Horse-Play @ Riverside Studios...

Last night Jonathan, Elliot and I went to see Horse-Play at the Riverside Studios in London glitzy Hammersmith. 

 

For a play about spicing up a couple’s sex life with sexual role-play, sexy dressing up, a sex dungeon, hiring a sex worker to help out, and lots of sexual paraphernalia, there was precious little sex in Horse-Play. For a sex dungeon cosplay comedy (is that a genre?) it was just a bit too tame.

 

In fact, it was more like a gentle domestic sitcom - complete with domestic bickering. The basic set up of a gay couple, trying to spice up their sex life after ten years together by doing a bit of role-play in what affectively became an escape room could’ve been a good idea. But really wasn’t. It was underwritten. Yeah, it started off alright but it started to drag and in act two actually got a little bit boring. The jokes weren’t landing. 

 

At one point the sex worker they hired to host their little cos-play game gets knocked out. Is he dead? They are all locked in a basement together with a dead sex worker? Well, that would’ve made the play far more interesting. If he had died. It could have been a sort of Joe Orton black-humoured farce. But no, our sex worker hero comes round. Oh, and does he have amnesia? Yes. Sigh. Is the door lock faulty? Why, yes it is. Sigh. It was as funny as three Spider-Man’s pointing at each other. 

 

Things did pick up a little towards the end when the sex worker’s girlfriend arrives (also a sex worker but dressed as a policewoman - ha ha). But it barely saves the evening. 

 

Should have been funnier.