The Girlfriend Experience
Young Vic
Helen
Globe
Who exploits prostitutes? Men, of course. And women, too. In particular those feminist politicians, always at panic stations, always posing as moral redeemers, who promote the myth that there’s only one type of hooker in this country — the crackhead Albanian rape-slave living in an airing cupboard — and that her only hope of rescue is a No. 10 policy statement. The truth is more complex and less alarming. Alecky Blythe’s verbatim piece gives us the authentic low-down on the skin trade. ‘Verbatim’ means Blythe spent weeks recording live testimony from a group of aging prostitutes which she then shaped into a dramatic text. The script is performed by actors listening to the words relayed to them on earpieces. It sounds contrived but the result is lucid and amazingly naturalistic. You’re there, you’re in the whorehouse, with the whores.
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