Black and White and All Over: A review of We Had Fun
★★½
Content warning: sexual violence, coercion, sexual assault, discussions/disagreements of previous consent.
According to the Fringe Media site, We Had Fun, a new play from creators Emmeline Hartley and Jack Mulling, explores the “greyest areas of consent and sexual politics.” And while it certainly seems to set out with the intention of doing so, I would have to respectfully disagree. Unfortunately, what is achieved in the end is much closer to black and white than grey.
Briefly, We Had Fun takes close friends Oscar and Ela as they rehash and investigate an alcohol-fueled night out. While all signs point to the two having feelings for one another, whatever happened that night has fundamentally altered the futures they might have had. The show’s tagline is “it could have been a rom-com,” but instead it’s a horror show. As Ela seems to redact the consent that Oscar is convinced she gave freely and enthusiastically, the conversation snowballs out of either’s control. We Had Fun cuts between what the audience must take to be the “true” order of events and each individual’s word.
At its best, We Had Fun is quick-paced, dynamic, and inventive. With direction and movement from Carrie-Anne Ingrouille, the choreographer from Six: The Musical, each moment is carefully configured onstage to bring the emotional inner world onstage. The decision to create unreliable narrators in both Ela and Oscar is striking, as the audience’s version of events seems to branch immediately from each of theirs, turning the audience unwillingly into the third perspective. The lighting and sound design from Benjamin Vetluzhskikh and Blanka Barbara Stahl is illustrative of the almost video-game world represented on Grant Kempster’s poster. There are certainly a few items here to commend and to be proud of, but as the production stands: there’s more going wrong than right in We Had Fun.
While Ingrouille’s movement direction, and Vetluzhskikh and Stahl’s tech are innovative and evocative, they are absolutely out of place in this play. Sharp blackouts and lengthy segments of techno music are wanting for a change in form. Could this have been a short film instead? With the direction and design creating a staccato and static emotional space, overrun with neon bells and whistles, Hartley and Mulling’s writing has no room to expand or stand on its own merit. The dialogue is forgettable as a result, especially when juxtaposed against the idea that we will soon see the “real” version of events as soon as Oscar and Ela stop speaking about it.
By putting the “real” version onstage, Hartley and Mulling remove the nuance and the audience-investigation from the production, negating their character’s dialogue outside the night in question. As Oscar’s version of events gets further from what we see to be the truth, and his present-day counterpart becomes more reactive and attacking, the potential for any nuanced reading of the situation shrinks, and the once grey-zone goes full noir. Ingrouille is insistent that you don’t miss Oscar’s phone, which he pulls out rather obviously to record with. With this the play ends, the almost cartoonishly evil Oscar twisting Ela’s conversation into a statement of her own guilt and consent.
We Had Fun is based on Keep Breathing, a short film with almost the same plot, also co-written by Hartley. After watching it myself, I wish they’d simply left it alone. The short film is far superior, with a more nuanced reaction and set-up from the “Oscar” counterpart, played excellently by Damien Molony, combined with a gentler and more thought-provoking ending. Hartley’s acting in the film is beautiful and delicate, vulnerable in a way which simply hasn't been translated.
By ramping up the drama for stage, Hartley and Mulling lose much of what made the original sing. By changing the “one-night stand” premise to best friends, you’d imagine that they were trying to push deeper into the grey area and nuance of a hook-up gone awry, and I’m not sure how it ended up so far in the opposite. The two additions to the cast, Emma Houston and Tessa Redman, have very little purpose on stage beside moving furniture. With the reveal that Oscar orchestrated Ela’s redundancy from work, fully coerced and manipulated her into sex she didn’t want and consistently refused, and then framed her for false report, this is not an investigation of the grey areas of consent but a clear production of rape on stage. My only remaining question: why?
Elena Cebulash
Cover image via @samfrankwood_ and @elevatedpitchdesign
