Self Tape ★★★★★

By The Recs SCD - Steve Coats-Dennis 3 years ago

Self Tape is a bold new work written and performed by Michael Batten exploring the decision of a struggling actor to enter the world of online sex shows

“Bold and unflinching” is one of the overused review phrases that critics throw out with careless abandon. I’m sure The Recs has been guilty of the casual re-use of it in the past. But if there is a piece of a drama that deserves to called bold and unflinching it is Self Tape.

Written and performed by Michael Batten, it tells the story of jobbing actor, Jonas Harland. Struggling to land acting roles, we meet Jonas as he films a series of self-tapes to audition for commercials. Whether spritzing his hair and deepening his voice to sell “Volume for Men” or being overgenerous with some mayonnaise to look like “the bukkake mess they want”, Batten is immediately likeable as Jonas and the initial tone is lighthearted as we are amused at the ridiculous things that actors need to do to supplement their income. 

All images by Bonnie Britain

As answering machine messages from Halifax bank about missed loan payments start arriving, Jonas finds a new way of making money as a model on a cam site. His secret cyber sex begins amusingly enough with the actor giving one performance into his laptop while sharing his true feelings in hilarious asides shared with the audience. Turning his bedside photo of his Mum facedown before taking his shirt off and commencing a cam session seems a funny and endearing gesture, at least to begin with…

Handsome, toned and uninhibited, Jonas find no lack of customers for his cam sex-shows. The script hints at a subtle shift from the in-person world to this lucrative virtual existence as when he and his (unseen) husband Kieran increasingly text each other in different parts of the same house. 

One of his online customers, an older American called Tony (Neil Burgess in a pre-recorded voiceover role), asks for a private exclusive session. Paying more, Tony calls the shots what he wants Jonas to do sexually. These scenes are increasingly explicit and in a venue of such intimacy as the Kings Head Theatre, this is where Batten’s performance earns the appellation “unflinching”.

Lit by the white light reflection of the laptop screens in an otherwise darkened room,  Joseph Bryant‘s lighting design leaves Jonas literally and figuratively isolated by these cam shows. In these interactions, Batten moves from being shirtless to being trouserless to taking his pants off. His nudity progresses from glimpses to sustained views of his body. 

The ingenuity of Batten’s script and Scott Le Crass‘s flawless, considered direction means that we as the audience become viewers of these cyber-sex shows as much as the character’s cam punters. Watching Jonas (simulated) graphic sexual performances, we are invited to become voyeurs and perhaps even to be titillated.  

Our protagonist’s feeling that his acting career is slipping away from him is palpable. After another commercial casting rejection, Jonas rues that he is never the one that they are looking for. An audition speech “I heard myself proclaimed, And by the happy hollow of a tree / Escaped the hunt” for a part in the National Theatre’s King Lear is juxtaposed against more messages with mounting urgency about missed loan repayments.

It’s against this troubling financial background that we see Jonas increasingly dependent on his online sex-work to keep himself afloat. As Tony’s fantasies grow darker, he increasingly becomes more controlling of Jonas. He is annoyed that Jonas has trimmed his pubic hair without asking permission. Notions of ownership infuse the American’s roleplaying scenarios as well as there conversation. While earlier Jonas had declared that he enjoys performing, likes being sexual so why not get paid for it, as the play goes on, the shift is clear from his voluntary participation into financial coercion. 

There is something of a metronomic feel about successive scenes of Jonas’s cam shows but the repetition does allow the script to demonstrate the gradual corrosive effect on him. In a superbly-paced performance, Batten subtly erodes Jonas’s sense of hope and happiness scene by scene. As he rails against the barriers of his industry – the wrong acting school, the wrong agent, reality TV – the 36 year old’s dream of a performing career is dying. Quoting a previous acting role of  Nicky Lancaster in Noël Coward’s The Vortex, lines such as “your whole existence had degenerated into an endless empty craving for admiration and flattery” and “you’re not going to be beautiful and successful ever again” speak of his own disintegrating mental health. 

Towards the end of the play, Batten wanders around alone in his room except for Tony on the laptop. He is entirely naked, but by this point his nudity is unsettling for the audience. He is exposed and vulnerable and we feel our complicity as onlookers. Having performed acts of increasing degradation for strangers, we become acutely aware how much of his self he has traded away. 

In Self Tape, Michael Batten has written a compelling, contemporary morality play. The emotional breadth of his character journey achieved across 70 minutes is a tribute to his considerable skill as an actor. Scott Le Crass, who seems to be developing an enviable reputation for directing these resonant monodramas, ensures the performance is as much a feast for the mind as well as the eyes. Jonas Harland’s story is thought-provoking and all too credible.

Bold and unflinching, and that’s the naked truth ★★★★★ 

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