Clickbait (Theatre 503)

The old chestnut that pornography empowers women without degrading them is given a new twist (as in "getting one’s knickers in a twist") in this dispiritingly bad play by Milly Thomas, which condones the decision "to exploit oneself without shame" while reserving the right to bring out the worst in everyone else.

It all starts with a pious speech about feminism delivered by one of three sisters who start a family business of sex booths – where you can create your own sex tapes; coming and camming as you please – designed as a capitalisation of the amateur porn market.

The speaker is one Nicola Barker (Georgia Groome), a middle-class airhead with attitude, who is brutally turning a holiday misdemeanour on Ibiza to her own grubby advantage. She does so with the assistance of her equally fatuous siblings, elder Gina (Amy Dunn), a receptionist of some sort, and younger Chloe (Alice Hewkin), an obnoxious schoolgirl.

The lack of any moral compass in their lives means that their rise to the top of the dung heap – their uniform is one of girlie pyjamas and pink silver wigs, making them resemble the Beverley Sisters, or three versions of Little Bo Peep-Show – is stated more than demonstrated, while Nicola’s weedy boyfriend Adam (Barney White) bleats occasionally about losing touch and feel with old Nic.

At least the attempt to show that pornography can thrive without any link to prostitution proves a non-starter, but any kind of thoughtful comment on the "Protest" movement (that’s what the sisterhood have the nerve to call their business) is confined to the squealy jabberings of a chorus of internet trolls in face masks. And who cares what they say about anything?

It’s well over a century ago since Shaw wrote Widowers’ Houses, his great comedy of capitalism and self-betterment underpinned by the sex industry, and Holly Race Roughan’s production, for all its superficial "trending," frank talk of masturbation and flip internet jargon, doesn’t even begin to compare.

How, for a start, have the sisters acquired public licensing for their booths around London? And the play further junks any campaign to be serious in showing the sisters going merely from bad to utterly stupid as they hammer down on a couple of clients (both played by Emma D’Arcy) who regret the unwitting signing of a "sharing" clause on their sex booth experiences of full-on lesbian labials and drunken heterosexual rape.

Needless to say, the whole dismal experience is as sexually engaging and informative as a wet Tuesday afternoon in Tewkesbury, though perhaps we should be a little more wary of those sinister pop-up toilet booths that land unbidden on our public pavements.

Clickbait runs at Theatre503 until 13 February 2016.