TABU, part of Grimfest, at Baron’s Court Theatre 24 – 27 October 2026

'Sex always sells – we’re just the newest trade in the world’s oldest profession’ ★★

Once the audience takes their seats in the intimate, wonderfully cavernous Baron’s Court Theatre, a scrolling script plays on the back of the stage, Starwars-style. We get the marketing copy for the play’s subject and namesake: TABU is “the startup of everyone’s nightmares”. The opening script moves gracefully from gentle to funny to then increasingly disturbing as its true purpose becomes clear – to artificially generate porn which allows users to explore their “deepest, sickest fantasies”.

We meet TABU’s founder, the dressing gown clad Alister, shuffling around a “4 million Kensington” Townhouse who seems to be living off supermarket meal deals, and the firm’s junior lawyer Morgyn, much more buttoned up, there to discuss the firm’s response to a recent string of scandals.



The creative team have set themselves a considerable challenge. They’re telling a story about something so contemporary and talked about that it’s difficult to find something new to serve up to an audience. The characters don’t confront the consequences of what the company has unleashed on the world so much as plan a legal response to protect its cash. There’s an intelligence in choosing to portray that unfeeling side of Big Tech. But with neither character seeming to have much emotion about the whole thing, much of the play is like sitting in on someone else’s work meeting.

The violence, when it happens, feels gratuitously excessive. Women hardly need reminding of the threat of male violence, and seeing a woman repeatedly having her head smashed against a table adds little to our understanding of it, or to the story. Morgyn’s character, too, moves between the stereotype of the ice-cold professional woman and that of the quivering victim. In a play about technology which reduces women to objects of male fantasy, it’s dispiriting to meet a female character with such little complexity.

TABU will play at Baron’s Court Theatre from the 24 - 27th of October 2026

BOX OFFICE: https://www.baronscourttheatre.com/grimfest2026

Cast

Dolly Ananya Sahay as Morgyn

Louis Cavalier as Alister

Creatives:
Written and Directed by Zach Lonberg

Stage Managed by Lindsay Duet

Produced by Lauren Herd

Director/Dramturg Jaimee Doyle

Fight Choreographer Shreyas Ranjan

Reviewer: Naomi Elster is an award-winning Irish author and playwright living in London. Her plays have been staged in London, Dublin and New York, whilst her fiction and nonfiction have been published worldwide, including in Crannóg, Meniscus. Her work has appeared in both the Guardian and the BBC. Her pieces retell history from a women’s point of view, shining a light on Invisible disability and exploring contemporary themes such as online dating and the relationship between loneliness and misogyny.