Eyes Wide Woke

Very ‘woke’ – or she imagines she is – opinionated and confrontational Valorie (Ashleigh Clarke) invites sex worker Jasmine (Emma Drysdale) to join her fiancée, nervous, timid Sara (Ashley Tardy), former lover and pants man Noah (Luke Jacka) and old school mate, very camp, very loud Angelo (Joshua White) for an intimate dinner.  This will demonstrate – if not prove - just how ‘woke’ Valorie is.  During dinner (delivered by Uber Eats), there will be a full and frank discussion of Jasmine’s profession, feelings and choices.  How bold!  How non-judgemental!  Sure enough, Jasmine shows up – we’re not quite sure why – maybe she’s curious – and she even foregoes the fees she could have made for the evening.

When she arrives, we already have a pretty good idea of the other characters – all of them rather getting on our nerves - and Jasmine is a nice contrast: calm, quiet, articulate, much better dressed and much more attractive.  It’s not quite the cliché of the ‘tart with the heart’, but it’s close.  Jasmine becomes the ‘truth teller’ exposing the other’s foibles and pretences.  Called upon to tell a ‘ghost story’ (would that happen so early in the evening?) Jasmine tells a supposedly true story that sets up panic and violence in a wholly unbelievable way to provide a climax to this seventy-five-minute play.

Director Kashmir Sinnamon has gone to some trouble with his theatre-in-the-round set (no designer is credited) ingeniously creating four areas of Valorie’s and Sara’s apartment in the very small Courthouse Hotel space.  The problem is that in using these spaces – which unfortunately must accommodate a large column – half the audience cannot see the actors’ faces at any one time.  (Other productions at the Courthouse have accepted the space’s limitations and worked around them more successfully.)

Sadly, this is not a great or even a good play but whatever chance it has of making its thin argument is marred by over-emphatic, much-too-big-for-this-space acting.  Only Emma Drysdale keeps her head and is relaxed, natural and believable – although, it must be said, her Jasmine is the only natural and believable character.  The title, a play on the title of the movie Eyes Wide Shut, suggests the playwright’s intentions: satire on certain contemporary middle-class pretentions and preoccupations, ‘virtue signalling’ and holier-than-thou condescension.  But that intention only goes so far.  The reference to Kubrick’s movie is pretty glib and the play doesn’t get near it in substance.  We’re left wondering why Bitten By – often an interesting company – picked this one.

Michael Brindley