KIDS PLAY – The Space – Niddry St – 4K

By Peter Maddern

As old a profession as prostitution is, at what point does the payment for sexual services leave that slur and just become the price you have to pay to achieve an emotional and not a physical end, especially in the world of apps where (in the words of an economist) ‘transaction costs’ are minimal?

17 year old Theo (Clement Charles) has made contact with ‘Harry’ (Gareth Watkins), an insurance guy at a conference in Brighton. Despite the older man’s reservations, Theo ensures the meeting takes place and so it does where the play is set, in Harry’s hotel room. There the story takes, with much humour, many twists and turns; fetishes and fondness, power and porn, traded off around a disputed fee of 200 pounds.

Both actors do well with Charles, the toi- and business-boi, very much at home in his role that conveys his character’s internal confusion over where money is the end or just the means to it. It is thoughtful, well written and extremely well executed theatre, with perhaps the exception being who does the paying which, at least to the uninitiated, perplexingly unrealsistic.

Kryztoff Rating – 4K

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