Conversations After Sex By Mark O’Halloran at Park Theatre 30 April - 17 May 2025
‘A wasted opportunity’ ★★1/2
Without wishing to over-share my own ‘conversations after sex’ would not translate to the stage particularly well but in Mark O’Halloran’s play there is enough to justify an 80 minute piece - but only just.
We follow a woman’s sexual adventures across the course of a year or so as she meets a series of different men whilst maintaining her own anonymity - as indeed the men do also. We see short vignettes where connections are made and lost, life is dissected and re-arranged, and we begin to gradually piece together the fragments of life’s heartaches which have led the woman to where she is.
As the woman, Olivia Lindsay maintains a stoicism and a distance both from the men she encounters and thus from the audience itself. We begin to understand her needs and desires and what fuels them. Of course, there is a hidden event that comes to life which maybe goes some way to explain her almost morbid fascination with sex and men. The introduction of her sister - played nicely in an under-written role by Jo Herbert - both breaks up the bed-hopping and again helps to give an insight into the back-story.
The men are all played by Julian Moore-Cook who convincingly portrays a young man from Brazil, from Northern Ireland and a couple of different southern Irish men. As the woman begins to show and tell us more about her own life, we also get to understand what drives these men to undertake these anonymous sexual turns.
Lindsay and Moore-Cook work together well - very natural and easy. The men get all the best zingy lines - including a great one about sleeping with all his neighbours (‘I love in a cul-de-sac’). The transitions are handled elegantly with light and sound by Bethany Gupwell and Xana - the latter whose work I admired in the recent Shifters.
I wanted and indeed expected to really like this but even with a short run time I’m afraid my mind was wondering and I was, to be honest, just a bit bored. I really didn’t care about anyone much, found the introduction of the sister to be a wasted opportunity and whilst the ending was neat and moved me to a degree, I’m not sure that O’Halloran explored the more interesting themes and motifs that these situations threw up. A disappointment.
Images: Jake Bush
