Djuna

Image (above): DJUNA by Eva Rees. Dion Mills (outcry). Photographer: Darren Gill

At a key point in this gripping thriller, Marcus (Dion Mills), a cool, self-possessed businessman, quotes Oscar Wilde: ‘Everything in the world is about sex, except sex.  Sex is about power.’  This aphorism provides the central idea of Djuna.  It’s also a play that, with chilling insight, is about self-hatred turned outwards and it’s about the way a victim can be overwhelmed and fall into a kind of love with the abuser...

Marcus quotes Wilde to Djuna (Jay Gold) - whose real name is maybe Casey – a near twenty-year-old boy who wants to transition and who needs money for the hormones and, ultimately, the surgery.  

Marcus is Djuna’s client.  They meet in a suspiciously tacky hotel suite (design Bethany J Fellows).  Djuna arrives dressed and made-up as a female, but not overtly cliché ‘feminine’.  She is jumpy, anxious and – as Jay Gold plays the character – touchingly sweet.  Jay Gold makes us care for Djuna.  If we did not, we would not be so held, so on the edge of our seats, and the play would not have the tension it generates, increment by increment.   

Image: DJUNA by Eva Rees. Dion Mills (with cigarette) and Jay Gold. Photographer: Darren Gill

Marcus, who admits, off-hand, that he’s married, with children, not so subtly big notes himself about his business connections, about his friend who owns this hotel. He orders bottle after bottle of champagne from room service – constant reminders that he’s powerful, he’s in charge, bigger and better than Djuna.  He is not a likeable character – and Dion Mills never wavers in portraying Marcus’ grating condescension and unpleasantness.  At first, naïve Djuna is sceptical – as well she might be – but she’s a kid, who needs the money.  Marcus is grooming Djuna, but why and for what?  He employs the time-honoured technique of put-down followed by kindness.  So, Djuna, grateful, falls under Marcus’ spell... 

We lean forward; we can feel the trap closing even if we don’t yet know what the trap is, and Djuna misses the cues.  Eva Rees’ script is structured around these cues and director Kitan Petkovski makes them absolutely clear.  Take the moment when Marcus is in the bathroom and Djuna decides to rob him.  She empties his wallet, puts the cash in her backpack – and then puts it back...

Image: DJUNA by Eva Rees. Dion Mills. Photographer: Darren Gill

Given that the whole play is a sort of flashback after an intriguing beginning, scene changes and the passage of time are indicated by two figures swathed in white HAZCHEM overalls, goggles and gasmasks.  They never speak, but their presence immediately indicates ‘crime scene’.  They are also stagehands, there to restore order and change props as things go on.  Whoever’s idea this is, it provides welcome comic relief – and even better - the pair are increasingly caring and solicitous of each other... 

There is, however, a jolting and graphic change of direction as the play itself tips suddenly (or is it suddenly?) into Grand Guignol – and psychodrama becomes a quite sickening ‘body horror’ flick.  Is it Rees’ intention to say that this is a logical development of what’s gone before?  More than likely, but it strains credibility.  It’s certainly shocking – and perhaps alienating – not so much for the ‘horror’ – which is genuinely horrific - but for the genre change.  But we still want to know what happens next. 

Image: DJUNA by Eva Rees. Jay Gold (centre). Photographer: Darren Gill

This ninety-minute play builds and sustains all the way through.  Gold, Mills and Petkovski give us consistently developing characters that ratchet up the tension.  Djuna isn’t Boys in the Band – it’s much, much darker – but they have in common themes of hatred and cruelty.  Another and famous quote from Wilde may be apt: ‘Yet each man kills the thing he loves.’  See Djuna and see if that’s true.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Darren Gill