Love Bites

In a moment reminiscent of The Two Ronnies’ least subtle of double-entendres, Love Bites hits a watershed when a television chef character advises her audience to "make the cock look pretty". By this point, it’s abundantly clear that Daniel Pitt’s grotesque food/sex metaphors aren’t going to get any better. As the audience grapples with the play’s cynical shock tactics and attempts to work out if they’re supposed to laugh at this endless stream of shallow characterisation and childlike dialogue, snorts of disbelief ring out in the intimate venue.

Claire and Stephen’s central 'romance' is simply inexplicable. Stephen appears to despise his girlfriend, constantly calling her fat and denigrating her for eating, while merrily enticing her with sausages. In a glorious clash of bad acting and an excruciating script, Stephen is unlikable on every level. And that’s before he’s raped his girlfriend with a sausage.

The incessantly needy Claire, meanwhile, submits to his every desire. She's a troubling female lead and a misjudged attempt to examine the politics of love and gender. Most baffling of all in this entire production is its wildly ambiguous intentions and incongruent stylistic touches. It flirts with some interesting visual touches: food is chopped, thrown around and rubbed on bare flesh until the stage resembles a bomb blast in a branch of Subway. The shock factor is consistently high, but the audience is left sickened and hollow with no spark of hope, nor character development, nor intellectual stimulation to soften the blow.