Banging Denmark by Van Badham. The Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Road, London SW 10 to 11 May 2025. 5✩✩✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.
Photo Credit: Ali Wright.
Banging Denmark by Van Badham. The Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Road, London SW 10 to 11 May 2025.
5✩✩✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.
“Terrific biting satire about on line predators and falling in love.”
A black and very funny satire about the now generation Van Badam’s play is one not to miss. It was first staged in 2019 at the Sydney Opera House and now gets its European premier. Jake Newhouse runs a podcast in which he gives advice to men with sexual difficulties. A hunk, he is in real life a management consultant, a one night stand and move on kind of guy. He has fallen out with a feminist academic Ishtar Madigan played by Rebecca Blackhouse, sued her for libel and reduced her to living in the photocopier room at her work place helped out by her colleagues Denyse and Toby, a lost soul in love with Denyse but too shy to tell her. One day Jake, played by Tom Kay, meets Annna played by Maja Simonsen ,an ice cold Danish librarian, who will have nothing to do with him, which Jake finds impossible to endure. He solicits the help of Ishtar, bribing her – he is not short of cash – with the funds he deprived her of with his law suit and the rom com to end all rom coms begins. Jake, of course, gets his deserved comeuppance while the others find different ways of escaping from the toils of the rom com world of today. Director Sally Woodcock has kept the various worlds they inhabit together and separately spinning at speed and elicited terrific performances from her cast and particularly from Kay whose musclebound hunk is a masterly and loathsome creation. Just who ends up in bed with whoever comes as a surprise – several in fact - and the play comments sharply on the on line world of sexual gratification and that of the men who exploit it for their own ends. It is funny, breathtaking in its surprises, and what happens after Ishtar lets her hair down, or rather, has it let down, is not what one expects. Jodie Tyack as the frustrated and willing Denyse gets rather more to do that James Jip as Toby, which is possibly the only weakness in the whole thing. Toby, while damaged, is possibly the nicest of the lot and as played by Jip one feels sorry for him if for nobody else. His story, the counterpart to the main tale about predator Jake, or rather de Witt, which is the name he uses on line, and the rampant feminist Ishtar, might heve been fleshed out a little more but that is to quibble. The play as it is hits all its targets bang on and is one not to miss.
Cast
Tom Kay – Jake Newhouse.
Maja Simonsen – Anna Toft.
Rebecca Blackstone - Ishtar Madigan.
Jodie Tyack – Dr Denyse Kim.
James Jip – Toby Bello.
Creatives
Director – Sally Woodcock.
Set Designer – Katy Mo &Leah Kelly.
Lighting Designer – Richard Williamson.
Sound Designer & Composer – Ed Lewis.
Costume Designer – Leah Kelly.
