Pornography

It’s been just over three years since the 7/7 London bombings – but is it still too soon for the event to be represented on stage? It’s a question that's inevitably conjured up by Simon Stephens’ new play Pornography – making its UK debut at the Traverse at this year’s Fringe.

Startlingly, it’s one of the first plays to be staged in Britain that attempts to tackle the bombings head on. Set during the seven days preceding the event, it encapsulates the raw energy and euphoria that set in on the capital in the wake of the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Live8 and London’s Olympic bid victory – all set against the dizzying, terrifying comedown ushered in by the explosions on July 7.

They’re events that have shaped the course of life in Britain ever since. However, whilst Pornography’s playwright is English, the impetus behind the work was not. Commissioned by the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, the play made its world debut in Hanover in June 2007, where it was widely acclaimed and where Stephens enjoys considerable popularity on the German theatre circuit. Indeed, earlier this year, On the Shore of the Wide World won Stephens an Oliver Award for best new play, and his previous play Motortown (written in the four days following the London bombings) was widely praised.

So why has Pornography taken so long to reach his native shores? Stephens seems to think it’s his humanistic characterisation of the suicide bombers that lies behind the reticence of our national theatres to bring his work to life.

“At its heart is the idea that the suicide bombers were in no way monstrous, or evil, or alien. But rather that they were deeply human and deeply English and the product of a culture of alienation and transgression. I think a lot of English theatres were nervous about the instinct to humanize a suicide bomber. I think some of them found it a little raw, especially those based in London.”

Perhaps this was partly the reason behind the decision to hold Pornography’s UK premiere in Edinburgh – after all, the Fringe may have many ties with English theatre companies but its location is far enough removed from the capital to mean that the play’s humanistic depiction of the 7/7 bombers is less likely to hit a raw nerve with its audience.

But for Stephens, a former University of Edinburgh graduate and previous resident of Tollcross – where the Traverse is located – the decision to stage Pornography here has as much to do with new Traverse director Dominic Hill’s ability to “embrace the challenge” of his innovative script as the seeming shyness of other English theatres.

“I think maybe some [theatres] were unnerved by the form of the play as well,” Stephens states. “As a script it can be tricky to read. You have to read like a detective, you have to look for clues. Some people are less keen to do that than others…”

Co-produced by the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and directed by Sean Holmes, who Stephens describes as “an unerring bullshit detector,” it comes as something of a relief to see a play break through the dozens of Iraq-themed and Bush-related titles that have dominated the Fringe programme over the last few years. Pornography promises to be a play that not only tries to understand the subverted ‘Englishness’ of the 7/7 bombers but invites the audience to challenge their perceptions of Britain's most notorious terrorists. This could be a new frontier in theatrical innovation at the Fringe, not just another ‘Suicide Bomber: the Musical’ - though Stephens claims he is currently writing a musical on Californian songwriter Mark Eitzel, a work he dubs “an unapologetic love story.” It might sound like a dramatic shift in subject matter for Stephens but its essential themes - the basics of human experience – might not be so different to that of Pornography.

“Pornography is unusual for me because it’s set against a real context,” he says. “But it’s about the same theme I always write about: what it is to be a human being. The complicated messiness, hope, despair, fucked up sorry sadness and love and comedy and joy of that. It’s just got a suicide bomber in it.”