Review: SWEETMEAT, Old Red Lion

A failed engagement and extended repression are a deadly concoction in Ivo de Jager’s new play Sweetmeat. When Sigmund’s relationship falls apart and moves in with the frankly weird but sweet Christian, his restrained sadism quietly erupts after previously ruining his life. They discover that their compatibility expands further than a shared love for foreign films and folklore, but where do you draw the line between quirk interest and psychological disturbance?

It’s sexy and repulsive, horrid and argumentative - a truly compelling project that just needs some tidying up and a stronger dramaturgical control.

Running over 90 minutes plus an interval may not be the right format here. Though we mostly understand the universal need for a break, it can stunt the outcome of a production. On this occasion, it comes at a point where tension is still being built. If the fact that the characters haven’t been fully cemented in our favour isn’t enough to grant this critique, someone from the creative team had to interject with applause on press night because the audience was expecting a scene change. It’s an easily solvable problem.

De Jager plays a risky and risqué game. His writing has a strong foundation; he might be a tad philosophically self-indulgent and slip into exceedingly pretentious turns of phrase that stick out, but he tells a gripping story. It would be easy to reduce the plot to man’s fascination with cannibalism, but the writer digs deeper. His argument is intellectual in its presentation of depravity at its most human. Connor Geoghegan’s direction could be tightened up in its transitions, but he intensifies the pressure between the two men exceptionally well.

Matthew Dunlop and Jamie McClean establish an intriguing push and pull from the beginning. They watch experimental movies and hoover cocaine off the coffee table for days on end while their chemistry does the work. McClean’s Christian is captivated by Sigmund’s grandiose nihilism while discussing his mother’s troubled history and his own self-harming past. There’s a reason the performances are introduced by a long list of trigger warnings. The dialogue is peppered with mentions of violent content and snuff videos that appeal to the search for erotic gore.

It’s curious that the subject is approached with a level of blunt neutrality. The piece doesn’t try to make knife play appealing to the masses or justify it with convoluted justifications - the characters simply share the same shame and hunger. Their fetish and kinks shackle them, preventing them from building steady relationships and ultimately betraying their traumas. Underneath the unquestionably messed up surface, vulnerability lies in wait and that’s where the all the promise of the show is.

Removing the interval, tightening a few parts of the conversations, and de-beautifying others will lift Sweetmeat to an intense psychological analysis.

Sweetmeat runs at the Old Red Lion until 23 November.

Photo Credit: Ivo de Jager

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