Consensual

Classrooms out there are a sexual minefield for naïve teachers.

Consensual shows schools bristling with hormonal teenagers, porn savvy through social media, bullish, even assaulting and yet all pumped up about their rights.  And that’s just the girls.

British writer Evan Placey puts Diane (Lauren Richardson) right in the middle of it, as she struggles also to deal with a thwarted young man at the school gate, back after seven years and accusing her of unconsensual sex. 

So what did happen between the 15-year-old Freddie (Paul Whiddon) and his teacher, 20-something Diane?  Cutting between overheated classroom debates on proper sexual behaviour, we see the older Freddie inexplicably pursuing Diane and her dull tax accountant husband, Pete (well-played by Benjamin Vickers), and the local police.

These interlocked scenes are energetically staged in Renee Halse’s graffiti splattered classroom set, the nine students quietly considering the action when not leaping around their schoolroom.  

All changes in the second act, set seven years earlier in Diane’s flat, on a rainy night when the unhappy Freddie arrives at the door.  What happens then again shifts our moral compass. 

Whiddon is excellent as the egocentric, manipulative teenager while Richardson strikes the right postures but without inhabiting Diane physically. 

While the dénouement lacks punctuation and sexual tension (unaided by blanket lighting), this production by Johann Walraven is lively, satisfying theatre. And that’s thanks to Placey’s tug-of-morals play and the New’s competent young cast as those terrifying teenagers.

Review by Martin Portus

Images: © Bob Seary