PEEP

With PEEP, theatre company Natural Shocks has created one of the most innovative theatre spaces at this year’s Fringe. Nestled unassumingly alongside the Pleasance Grand, visitors to the specially-made Peepshow Box are ushered into tiny, claustrophobic cubicles where they don headphones and peer in at three short plays about sex that run on the hour, every hour.

The feeling of watching but not being watched acts as a novel dramaturgical device, engendering feelings of claustrophobia and seediness that are ripe for aesthetic manipulation. The problem, unfortunately, is that the plays themselves fail to capitalise on the mood invoked by this voyeuristic setting. Kefi Chadwick’s SexLife follows a couple attempting to spice up sex after the paralysing arrival of their firstborn, Leo Butler’s 69 explores the boundaries of the sexual psyche and Pamela Carter’s Meat joins a middle-class, middle aged couple as they both confess to secret online stashes of pornography. 

The plays each have a thought-provoking premise and are valiantly brought to life by the versatile cast of four. But perhaps hampered by the self-enforced 20-minute time constraint, all three ultimately feel like half-ideas, frustrating theatrical fragments that fail to provide either a meaningful commentary on sex or create narratives that elicit any real emotional tug. Considering the promise of such original site-specific staging, this feels like a missed opportunity.