28/08/26

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

The scariest thing about this 10-year anniversary staging of Locker Room Talk is not just how little has changed, but how sexual politics actually seem to be sliding backwards. Not only is Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief Donald Trump still parading his misogyny in the White House, but viral influencers such as Andrew Tate have brought the manosphere into the mainstream.

“Locker room talk” has broken out of the closet.

Last time we saw this production, written by Gary McNair and directed by Orla O’Loughlin, it was 2019. Since then, POTUS Biden has been and gone and the UK has weathered five PMs. Between them, none has been able to stem the sexist tide.

Locker Room Talk is simply staged: five women (Caroline Deyga, Gabriel Quigley, Jamie Marie Leary, Nicola Roy and Rachael Spence) stand in front of microphones, earphones in, repeating verbatim recordings of real conversations between real men. Ordinary men. The kind we all work with. Who see nothing wrong in rating their female colleagues out of ten and announcing if they’d give her one or not. It’s all just chitchat, right?

And yes, I know. Not all men.

But, still: too many men. The recordings cover blokes of different ages and backgrounds, from manual labourers to corporate lawyers. The “banter” is all depressingly similar. The saddest section is the little boys, who innocently parrot the prejudice they’ve heard.

The women’s performances are faultless. Let’s just hope the production doesn’t fall on tin* ears.

4.2 stars

Susan Singfield

*Yes, that is a reference to the ten-year anniversary. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.