An Argument about Sex

Synopsis

Helen and Charlie work for a hedge fund in the city, and against a backdrop of a global financial crisis, they try to settle a drunken argument from an office party the night before. Are the differences between men and women genetically hard wired? Are men inherently aggressive risk takers and women naturally more cautious and risk-averse? The argument has ramifications in their personal lives, as well as in the economic crisis that is engulfing their industry and the world at large. Charlie offers an unusual way of settling the argument: a sociological experiment involving isolated teenagers that will test the inherent differences between the sexes. The privileged financiers watch as their human guinea pigs play out their first stirrings of adolescent friendship, sexual attraction, and jealousy...

Our Review:

4 November 2009

Pamela Carter’s new play promises to be an interesting, thought provoking study of the relationship between the two genders, and their interaction with risk. However, it fails to deliver. Written as a self styled response to [Pierre de Marivaux’s] ‘La Dispute’, the piece aims to open up the age old debate about what makes men, ‘men’ and women ‘women’.

The play opens in an unnamed office where the audience meet lawyer Helen (Selina Boyack) and hedge fund manager Charlie (Stuart Bowman). We quickly learn of a fling between the pair resulting in a pregnancy and what follows is the relentless bombardment of popular statements about the differences between men and woman.

The lack of chemistry from Boyack and Bowman coupled with an uninspiring script makes for an uneasy start, leaving the audience feeling they are watching an intellectual slanging match, not unlike a middle-class episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show.

To...

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