An Argument About Sex

The argument – more of a heated discussion, really – happened the night before. As the global financial meltdown began, compliance officer Helen (Selina Boyack) suggested to a group of male traders that women were innately more risk-averse than men.

Not true, argues Charlie (Stuart Bowman), a Fred Goodwin-style figure who equates regulation with castration but who managed to get Helen pregnant before the tide turned against him.

She took a risk by getting drunk and sleeping with him despite the pair’s repeated failure to make a relationship work, and indeed by opting not to terminate the pregnancy (although strangely there is no reference to this key decision).

The dialogue is fairly contrived, with the characters labouring points and talking about well-known theories and studies as if they are unfamiliar or even brand new, but it’s stimulating stuff nonetheless. By the time the audience moves to a new space it is clear that disbelief will have to be suspended much further, but there’s a real buzz of anticipation, which is ramped up by a dramatic change of environment.

Pamela Carter’s play is described as ‘a response to Marivaux’s La Dispute’ – in fact, the second part is pretty much a re-treading of the 18th-century French comedy, in which it is revealed that four children have been reared in isolation in an attempt to discover which of the sexes is innately the more faithful. Charlie has bankrolled such a project, which may help to support or refute Helen’s theories as the children have also been raised, as far as possible, without awareness of the different sexes.

We enter an artificial garden of Eden, in which the subjects – named, for the amusement of their keepers, after famous soap opera couples – are to meet for the first time. First to arrive is Krystal. She is wearing a dress.

It’s at this point that the play starts to trip itself up. The focus shifts away from the original argument, and the references to the financial crisis start to feel less like a genuine focus and more like a flimsy attempt to make the production feel relevant.

The antics of the four guinea pigs are watchable enough in a Midsummer Night’s Dream kind of way, if not always easy to hear. However, by the time a dubious conclusion has been reached about the differences between men and women, it has become clear that this has little to do with the experiment’s purported aim.

What follows more or less amounts to a post-show discussion that the audience is compelled to attend: a film of Carter and director Stewart Laing in discussion with science writer Matt Ridley, whose book The Red Queen inspired the piece. Again, the level of discussion is very basic, with the questions posed by Carter and Laing managing to make a fascinating topic almost dull.

Carter has clearly been inspired by the book, but has failed to take the necessary steps further by interrogating the subject in more depth and then successfully dramatising it. Selina Boyack is always worth watching, and to an extent she and Stuart Bowman overcome weaknesses in the script just as Meg Fraser elevated Carter’s 2007 Fringe piece Game Theory, but replacing the actors with the creative team is a test too far for the patience of the audience.