GROOMED (Soho Theatre on Demand)****

 

By Dave

Link: https://sohotheatreondemand.com/show/Groomed

Link with subtitles: https://sohotheatreondemand.com/show/groomedcaptionedsubtitled £4

Available until: I have no idea but you get 48 hours access

Warning: 18+, descriptions of child sexual abuse and violence

Groomed first appeared as an award-winning play in 2017. Two years later, it was filmed on location in a children’s classroom. It is the film, directed by Nancy Meckler, which Soho Theatre have uploaded to Soho on Demand.

This isn’t an easy watch. It’s not one to rent when you want to relax. You need to be really strong in your mind for this one. It’s deeply painful in places, repellent in others. The concept of enjoying this play seems impossible, though there is certainly much to admire in the writing and acting (and the courage and honesty) of Patrick Sandford, who wrote the play from his own experiences.

Patrick is the sole performer in a play about his own horrific experiences as a child and how it has shaped him and still affects him. The fear inside him. The difficulties of speaking out. The people who knew but did nothing – a subject he explores with a humbling compassion. It’s difficult to watch this both as a parent and as a human being.

Patrick also takes the role of the teacher, David Moorby, presenting his point of view. I think perhaps the hardest thing is actually feeling sympathy for a man who does terrible things. It is unforgiveable and inexcusable in every way. There are certainly times when I hate Moorby but sometimes Patrick gives you the impression of a deep, raw loneliness in Moorby that throws you into an uncomfortable place. You can never condone what Moorby does but Patrick made me feel the character’s suffering. He also makes some very good points. I agree that the crime is in action, not attraction. We can’t help who we’re attracted to and I think sooner or later, we’re all attracted to someone we can’t have. Moorby will never be attracted to someone he can have. He will always have to be alone or with someone he doesn’t love fully because no other option is acceptable. The sad and horrific truth is that the unacceptable (so mild a word for that we’re talking about) happens.

A big problem around child sexual abuse is the silence and this applies not just to victims but to perpetrators and witnesses too. Partly because it’s not spoken of, victims don’t know how to speak about it themselves. Because it’s not spoken about, witnesses don’t know what to do. Because it’s not spoken about, people with the urge to express their feelings for a child in an unacceptable way don’t know how or where to get help. The silence is understandable but it helps nobody. This play gives Patrick the opportunity to talk – and gives us the opportunity to listen and learn.

During the play, Patrick also tells the story of two other men. The first is of a man who had a difficult childhood in a different way - the clarinettist and flautist Adolphe Sax, inventor of my instrument, the saxophone, and also the lesser-known saxhorn, a whole family of brass instruments which still exist today in the form of the flugelhorn, tenor horn, baritone horn and (to all intents and purposes), the euphonium, bass tuba and contrabass tuba. This story, however, focuses on the saxophone and its music is heard frequently, first warming up with scales, arpeggios and dominant and diminished sevenths at the start of the play and finally finishing the play as a quartet for three altos and a tenor. A lone saxophonist who is alone no longer and able to share with others. The musical interludes are lovely, though they do little to soothe the horror.

The second man is the Japanese army intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda, who continued to ‘fight’ in the Second World War until twenty-nine years after it had ended, apparently unable to accept the assurances that he could now safely leave his trench. There was only one person whose word he would accept. Only one person who could tell him to go home.

There are connections between these stories and with Patrick’s central narrative, though I wasn’t able to pick them out. But what I did feel was the pain and fear of a man who found it difficult to open up and to trust and was understandably consumed by what had happened to him but who was able to find some form of help in the stories of two men who were very different from each other and from him. Two men he could identify with in some way. Two men who showed him that there was more to him than what had happened to him. Patrick felt isolated from the people he couldn’t talk to but not from these two historical figures. That was my reading, anyway.

We see nothing graphic in this play. Although this is a film version, it is presented as a play – just Patrick addressing the audience, the flashbacks appearing in his words alone. There are descriptions of the abuse. I would say they’re not very graphic but different people will respond in different ways and for some people, the fact so much is left to the imagination could make it seem worse.

Definitely a play to consider watching but it’s all right to proceed with caution.