Consenting Adults is Stagepunk Theatre’s short-but-sweet whirlwind tour of sex. Split into two parts, played by the same team of three actors, we see first a girl coping with growing up, and secondly a group of people with a liking for sadomasochism. Part one makes use of a very interesting sound technique, whereby the actors respond to layers of sounds and music, and lip-synch to recorded voice. The recorded voice is reminiscent of a 1950s advert’s clipped tone, and takes the form of almost an instructional tape on how to grow up successfully. The lip-synching is effective for the most part, although extremely difficult for the actors to perfect, so the occasional line was missed or late. The actors’ use of movement and dance didn’t attempt to be tight physical theatre, but used a lot of what I like to think of as ‘the dancing of real people’. Often an actor would burst out into a moment of unselfconscious dancing and gesture to the music, resulting in an amusing insight into character.

The confined space, and close proximity of the audience to the performers makes for a somewhat awkward atmosphere that serves to heighten the feeling of empathy for the character of Molly as she travels from birth to puberty and into the rocky world of dating. The use of the flexible black box theatre in order to have audience seated on two sides works well and the actors succeed in drawing in every audience member.

Part two tells a very different story. We are confronted with several characters from Oscar Wilde’s, The Importance of Being Earnest. However, this is no usual nineteenth century social gathering as Wilde’s text has been mixed up and rearranged to incorporate expletives and racy conversation about the use of violence in arousal. Putting such a taboo topic in the context of a Wilde play makes for a very entertaining selection of scenes. Stagepunk once again chooses to use sound and voice in an unusual way, focusing on breath, rhythm and volume to highlight and punctuate the speech. Part two has been written in a disjointed fashion, frequently changing tenses and narrative point of view, which again adds to our interest, and the normal intonation and punctuation of speech has been removed.

The Importance of Being Earnest was accused of lacking moral social messages and was considered to be in rather poor taste when first showed in 1895. Stagepunk is playing on the notoriety that the play received in its own time by completely sabotaging any notion of polite civility and giving it a dangerous and sometimes hard-to-listen-to edge. As part two nears its climax, actor Simon Jay launches into a monologue describing in detail how his character, Algernon, would like to be killed, or kill someone. The drawn-out gory description leaves the audience unsure whether to laugh or get up and walk out of the theatre, although we were not left unsure for long as the play calmly reaches its finale.

This show is not for the easily embarrassed as there is full-frontal nudity and very graphic depictions of sex. Think Oscar Wilde meets Eli Roth’s Hostel.

Stagepunk’s innovative use of sound and voice reflects a young, contemporary audience’s need to listen to theatre in new ways. Sometimes the pure narrative voice doesn’t quite cut it and we are constantly engaged and inspired by different audio techniques. The actors performed with energy and pace and praise is due to Matthew Reynolds for his excellently composed soundtrack.