The Null Device

2001/6/16

Last night I went to the Store Room theatre to see the play Pretty Vacant, a triptych from the people at Theatre In Decay (who were behind The New Scum). Part 1 started ominously in an empty space with a couple embracing and abusing each other, surrounded by stacks of pills. It was rather nihilistic and bleak, and perhaps reminiscent of some of the late Sarah Kane's works. Part 2 involved two women dancing around, telling each other to sing out words and shuffling the audience around as they told a story; I thought this part was a bit tedious and hackneyed. Part 3 featured the late painter Frances Bacon, a man eating excrement from a porcelain toilet, a pointless survey and a paranoiac who kept spouting disturbing factoids about nuclear warheads, phone taps and poisons in the water supply. It was, in my opinion, the best part of the play.

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