Written for Culture Wars
Do you have to fake it to make in Britain today? That’s one conclusion to be taken from Sabrina Mahfouz’s savvy and taut two-hander, in which a young British Asian male steps into a brothel for the first time. AJ’s keen to maintain his macho outward appearance in front of Marley, a sex worker on her first shift, who adopts a Polish accent in front of clients.
As in J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, they get to talking, rather than tapping and, as both gradually shed protective layers, they reveal surprising depths. Marley, for instance, is a forensic biology student and picks apart AJ’s pretences with the eagle-eyed precision of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock. With defences dropped, the possibility of friendship – perhaps even something more, something real – flickers into life.
Mahfouz’s writing is smart, without ever labouring its point. In fact, it hasn’t really got a point, per se, it’s just a small momentary encounter, a single hour seen in real time, that reflects a wider political context without forcing one thing to the foreground. Even if the initial situation is a little pat, it’s within the bounds of possibility and, moreover, handled truthfully and tenderly.
Its best feature is in using the way we watch drama, forensically, to misdirect us into unjustified assumptions. Marley, in particular, slips out of every cliché that you try to pigeonhole her into. The accent sends you one way; her studies send you another; her lack of crippling student debts another still. People, it seems to say, are beyond presumption and pinning down.
Occasionally Matt Wilde’s direction can’t resist completing the image, but he’s drawn great performances from Faraz Ayub and Nadia Clifford as the two young Londoners that reset each other’s cynicism and return to the world outside a little wiser, a little less cynical and a lot more humane.
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