The Censor

Tonight, as mentioned, David, Lisa and I went to see Last Planet Theatre’s production of Anthony Neilson’s The Censor. (Tom was gone on a bike ride and probably wouldn’t have enjoyed this very much, anyway.)

Yesterday evening, I told David on the phone that Last Planet Theatre’s motto is “Difficult plays for difficult people.” He said, “Well, you’re difficult.” Just as I was going to agree, he graciously went on, “And I’m difficult, but what about Lisa?”

“Right, she’s not very difficult,” I said. “In fact, she’s about the least difficult person I’ve ever met.” David concurred. I actually now and then ask myself, “Would Lisa say such-and-such?” If I can’t picture her saying it, it’s probably not the right thing to say.

The program for the play quotes Neilson, the author of The Censor, as saying theater is “about putting people through something.” This certainly did. One couple walked out in the middle.

There are just three characters: a film censor, a woman pornographer, and the censor’s wife. And there are three extremely courageous actors to play them: John Andrew Stillions is The Censor, Erin Gilley is His Wife, and Emma Victoria Glauthier is Shirley Fontaine, the pornographer.

The pornographer has submitted a film of which 35 minutes will have to be cut for it to be approved, the censor tells her. Last Planet’s production of this play makes liberal use of pornographic films, projected on a transparent screen. Sometimes we just watch the films; sometimes the actors stand behind the screen and talk to us through the images.

The pornographer sets out to seduce the censor in the most direct way, undressing in his office. Meanwhile, the censor’s wife is having a series of affairs that she tells him all about. Her lovers are interested in meeting the censor to discuss the situation; they want to be friendly with him, not his enemy. The wife is frustrated that the censor doesn’t want to do this and accuses him of refusing to communicate.

The censor has a series of extremely provocative meetings with the pornographer; he assumes she is trying to seduce him so that he will write a favorable report about her movie. One day she asks him to have intercourse with her—she has brought a red blanket for this purpose, which she unfurls upon the floor, and a black beaded pillow—but he stuffily insists that for him, sex is about love, and that he is incapable of having sex where love isn’t present.

The pornographer asks the censor questions about her movie, helping him to think about what must underlie the seemingly straightforward images. She is an astute psychologist. Of one image of a sexual act, she asks something like, “Can’t you see that the man’s previous girlfriend was Asian?”

She realizes that the censor is in fact impotent and she figures out why (it has to do with his parents’ relationship). She figures out that he has a fantasy he dares not tell anyone and what that fantasy is, and then she makes that fantasy real—this is all done explicitly on stage—it involves a good-sized, glistening turd—sorry this blog mentions turds so often—and they have explosive sex.

The censor, naturally enough, falls in love with the pornographer and is distressed when it seems she’s going away. He says he still can’t see what underlies the images in her film. “You will,” she says.

Near the end, there is a scene where the censor’s wife is saying she wants him to meet her latest boyfriend. The censor is in tears—quite a lot of tears—over what is happening in his relationship with the pornographer. The wife tells him to calm down, that they’ll work it out. She assumes his distress is because of her affair.

At the very end, the censor is watching a pornographic film (as are we) and his face suddenly lights up: He finally sees what the pornographer meant him to see (at least, this is what I think she meant him to see)—that sex that touches the deepest, perhaps sacred places of desire is love, because for it to be that way, one person has to see the other, has to see into the other, has to see what is needed, and that seeing, that attention, is an act of love.

The wife, who is the official Sexual Person and Free Spirit, can’t see her husband at all. She doesn’t have the faintest idea what is going on with him or what he wants, and thus he is impotent in that relationship.

It’s only the pornographer who is able and willing to see the human being before her.