After Sex All The Animals Are Sad
C, Chambers St, Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Group: Velocet

Stuart Simpson

The idea that there is a relationship between sex and violence is nothing new, but Velocet do a good job of presenting it on stage.

Anna is in a long term relationship with Jerry, a boring fop who is shit in bed. At the some time she is carrying on a pen-pal relationship with a convicted murderer, Max, of which Jerry knows nothing.

The opening scene sets the theme clearly enough. Jerry and Anna fumble about passionlessly in bed, while Max is getting hot and sweaty alone in his cell, with a great deal more enthusiasm.

Jerry is intelligent, sophisticated and a complete prat. Max isn't thick, but he has had no education, he swears a lot (he even says cunt), likes porn and is generally a bit of an animal.

Athough the play revolves around Anna, it is the two views of our nature embodied by Max and Jerry that define the play. Jerry, who is writing a PhD on apes can only understand people through his study of primate behaviour. To Jerry's intellectual mind we are all animals, driven by instincts little changed by civilisation.

Max only cares about his most base instincts and behaves 'like an animal' (when attacked by three men with baseball bats he beat one of the men to death). But Max understands the humanity of what we call our animal nature. He understands precisely why Anna writes to him, and why she resists him. He asks Anna to give him pictures of her naked, and when she gets coy he makes her admit that she wants someone to see her.

Animals is a play about one woman coming to terms with her sexuality, in its broadest sense. But it ends on a note of fear. How will Anna cope when Max is released from prison, when her controlled flirt with danger becomes something she will have to live with in the flesh. Despite all the references to our animal nature, Animals is a play about coming to terms with our humanity.

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