In search of Arrangement – King’s Head Theatre, London

In search of Arrangement – King’s Head Theatre, London

Author: Alexandra Hannant

Director: Kitty Ball

‘It is like entirely feminist’ argues a single of Charlie’s glamorous co-workers at the United Nations who spends her evenings concentrating on her facet hustle as an escort, only the two ladies operate in the Division for the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation. Alexandra Hannant’s Seeking Arrangement, showing at the King’s Head Theatre as aspect of Playmill: A Festival of New Do the job, is a savvy if unfinished evaluation of woman bodies and the ability to control.

Ill of listening to ‘No lighty, no likey’ Bolton lass Charlie leaves her dwindling extended-length romantic relationship and moves to New York to be part of just one of the most illustrious organisations in the western earth. But with a snarky boss, no induction and a lower income, the UN is almost nothing like Charlie hoped. So, inspired by a colleague, she signs up for the Seeking Arrangement courting application and gets Sugar Child Tamara.

Hannant’s display is a humorous, normally outraged, tale of a young lady seeking to make her desires come accurate, if only she knew what those dreams were being. The character of Charlie normally takes a really British perspective on the foibles of her American boss and workplace, giving a lacerating watch of her encounters to the audience although rolling her eyes at the bewildering acronyms, rudeness and convoluted determination-creating in her working day task.

While Charlie takes a second to take into account the hypocrisy of it all and the white saviour narratives that start to make her unpleasant, we hardly ever get a tangible feeling of what it is like to work there or the disappointed program that hurtles Charlie to a significantly far more harmful nightlife. Instead, Hannant focuses on the glamorous parts of the career: the trend the events and the rotating delegates, all of whom turn into a steppingstone to her vocation as an escort.

Looking for Arrangement provides a few of examples of the poor dates that Charlie endures with creepy adult males but, yet again, a tiny much more element would flesh-out this 50-moment drama, offering the audience a increased feeling of how she bought started off and her shifting reactions as the revenue supplied went up and up. And Hannant is a little coy about what Charlie does for that cash – companionship and no intercourse is implied, but in a exhibit investigating the numerous ways women are exploited, coerced and trapped, that is probably the most critical piece of info.

It does, on the other hand, offer a truly solid section on the consequences of courting Dan1954, a common who will make Charlie an supply she struggles to refuse. The nastiness of that encounter and its aftermath is significantly affecting, suggesting that to fail to remember this is a financial transaction and to naively ‘trust’ somebody paying out for your time suggests Charlie is hardly ever as in control as she thinks and is just as manipulated as the women of all ages the UN is trying to find to protect.

Gaby Richardson is extremely likeable as Charlie, bursting into the room with significant electrical power and immediately successful above the viewers with her sweary, non-nonsense mindset. Over the class of the clearly show, Richardson demonstrates the extent to which Charlie’s bravado is mostly for us, an internal voice that she does not share aloud, demonstrating her character’s subsequent distress incredibly well.

Looking for Arrangement ends a small abruptly, so as properly as growing on the contrasting activities of Charlie’s two workplaces, there is scope for a complete second Act the place the character’s trajectory is concluded. There looks to be significantly far more to say about what comes about to this female, her conflicts of desire and the complexities of modern-day feminism exactly where revenue and power continue to contact the pictures.

Reviewed on 18 July 2021

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