Eleven real life sex workers share their lives in this sprawling show, directed by Mimi Poskitt with a devised text written up by Molly Taylor.
To state the obvious, ‘See Me Now’ is a worthy work, which clearly exists to offer empowerment to its performers – who are all marginalised, if only by professional discretion – as much as it does to entertain the audience.
That’s not to say it’s not entertaining, though: stylishly lit and choreographed, it’s essentially an eclectic storytelling show, in which 11 people who have lived bloody interesting lives share stories from them. It is slickly put together, but the performances are endearingly wooden or rough in places, which is fine – it feels authentic, and it helps us root for the performers.
The show’s defining trait is its diversity: the stories veer from the genuinely horrifying – a woman trafficked out of West Africa, people whose lives were ruined by crack – to still active professionals who seem to genuinely love what they do. All life is in between, from a bluff, no-nonsense thirtysomething woman from Stoke who sees prostitution as a means to an end, to a pair of rather inspiring trans women.
To see these people talk about this stuff, and more importantly, enjoy talking about it, is great. There are some intense, earnest confessional bits, but there’s a lot of pisstaking and dry humour. With names changed and photos banned, there is a feeling of trust in the room, a rare sense of the performers being able to talk freely among strangers.
The problem, such as it is, is that for all this, and no matter how slickly directed ‘See Me Now’ is, it contains an awful lot of stories that have relatively little in common with each other, either factually or stylistically (some of the performers barely touch on sex; some talk about almost nothing else). It teaches us that the sex worker community is a vibrant, diverse place full of fascinating human beings. And though you hopefully guessed that already, it that doesn’t make the stories any less interesting. But there’s no great, incisive point or unification of its many strands. Whatever the case, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime sort of show, and never less than interesting.