Asking For It (Birmingham Rep)

Sometimes a piece of theatre hits you right between the eyes and knocks you for six. Asking For It, which concluded its UK premiere at Birmingham Rep yesterday evening, is one such production.

Based on the novel by Louise O'Neill, it's a story of sexual consent that first appeared on stage in Cork and then Dublin in 2018, winning the Audience Choice Award at the 2018 Irish Times Theatre Awards and making the BBC's Unmissable Theatre list for 2020. Many of the original company have returned to the show as it crosses the Irish Sea.

Running at two hours 55 minutes, including an interval, the first act spans one hour ten minutes that introduces us to Emma and her circle of friends, all teenagers on the cusp of adulthood. Emma is the queen bee of the group, cocky and loud, and resentful of her friends' successes if they diminish her own. We're also introduced to the members of the school football team; young men who are preparing for a big match the following day. The celebrations that ensue during a night of partying after victory in that game bring catastrophic consequences as Emma gets drunk, takes ecstasy and is brutally assaulted as she is gang raped by the captain of the football team and two of his teammates. Act one concludes with the attack itself and the aftermath the following day as Emma, with few recollections of the evening's events, finds the boys' social media profiles reveal all. She's shunned by her female friends, who believe she was a willing participant. Alone on stage, Emma discovers a photo showed her unconscious body being urinated upon and states that the photo received 188 likes. With that, she leaves the stage in darkness and the house lights go up for the interval, met by hushed, total silence from the audience. Maybe others have experienced that kind of reaction in a theatre before but it was a first for me.

Act two, which runs for one hour 25 minutes, shifts the focus away from Emma's relationship with her circle of friends and this time focuses entirely on Emma and her family and their gradual disintegration, faced with a community unwilling to believe her or comprehend her determination to see her attackers face justice. It certainly makes for uncomfortable viewing, with the sense that, rather than being a victim, Emma has somehow brought shame on the family. The relationship between Emma and her father is particularly striking, as he seems barely able to even acknowledge her presence in the same room, yet can't articulate why. When Emma eventually starts to consider whether she should tell the authorities she wants to drop the charges against he assailants, the clumsy haste with which her parents seize on this and encourage her to do so, is very hard to watch. Only her brother really understands what Emma has been through and is horrified at the idea of letting the perpetrators of the assault get away with it. He rails against his parents while Emma, initially unnoticed, breaks down in the corner of the room. There were audible gasps from the audience as Emma's mother tells her daughter how lots of people who "claim" to have been raped are confused about what really happened to them. Eventually, we're left with Emma alone on the stage, a lone spotlight on her, as she reflects that maybe it would have been best if she'd just pretended it was consensual all along and said  nothing. With that heartbreaking conclusion, the light fades to black, with another protracted silence hanging over the audience, before the cast took their bows to a standing ovation.

As a work of theatre, this was as real, visceral and raw as it gets. The first act, with its focus on Emma, her circle of friends and the boys' football team, is playful, comedic and full of embarrassing teenage banter for the first sixty minutes before events spiral horrifyingly out of control. While initially Emma isn't particularly likeable, vying for attention and doing her school friends down, it's impossible not to feel her bewilderment and pain as the majority of her friends think she's simply regretting her drunken actions and making mischievous allegations. When we re-join the story a year on, we discover that Emma has become a recluse, her relationships with her family become only ever more strained, and the one friend who attempted to remain constant in their support for her, childhood sweetheart Conor, is pushed away. 

With her family shunned and subject to anti-social behaviour by the local community, eventually Emma is led to the heartbreaking conclusion where she joins others in blaming herself for the boys' actions that night and the subsequent turn of events. Even her own mother, while initially trying to make everything appear to be okay, eventually can't hide the cracks in her support for her daughter. Initially the family get by on whispered conversations, a lack of eye contact and the pretence of calm but the facade soon crumbles, culminating in a fiery exchange between father and son as Emma's brother pleads through tears for his parents to give his sister the support she all too plainly desperately needs, prompting her father to emerge from his emotional shutdown and explode in a howling fit of pain. It's one of the most harrowing scenes I've ever seen on stage.

Lauren Coe, who first played Emma when Asking For It premiered in Ireland, captures every nuance of her character's plight, as we see her insecurities laid increasingly bare as she's let down by parents and friends alike. Dawn Bradfield, Simon O’Gorman and Liam Heslin are also exquisite as her parents and brother. 

The switch in focus from act one, as Emma and her school friends do each other down and vie for attention from the boys, is cleverly mirrored in Paul O'Mahony's set of glass boxes that move around to create the different rooms and locations. For much of the first act, the set's boxes are illuminated by projections, enhanced by reflections off the floor. During the house party scene, where Emma is assaulted, the set initially blurs the lines as to what is happening, mirroring Emma’s own experience, as the audience are left with a kaleidoscopic view of distorted reflections and shadows, along with half-seen actions that reinforce the pervading power of perception. The walls then literally close in during act two, mirroring Emma's plight once again, as much of the remainder of the play takes place in the kitchen of the family home.

There are times watching Asking For It when the sense of pain of Emma and her family is almost overwhelming. However, while far from an easy watch, it's a production that can't fail to leave a lasting impression. A board in the foyer, where audience members have been invited to leave their feedback after each show, had comments from rape victims expressing their gratitude and appreciation for the story being told. Representatives from the Birmingham and Solihull Women's Guild, as well as the Rape and Sexual Violence Project (RSVP) were also on hand in the foyer at the interval and after the show to lend a supportive ear to audience members that wanted to talk about what they'd seen. And really, it's a huge shame that there's currently no further tour dates for Asking For It, as it's a production that really does deserve and need to be seen. It's unlikely that I'll encounter anything quite so powerful for a long time. The stunned silence, with no applause, that greeted the end of act one is one particular moment that will stay with me. A silence that said more than the most deafening round of applause.

Five stars.