Raving review, Hampstead Theatre

Breasts are so vital to heterosexual interaction, I imagine lactation fantasies are quite common. The Daily Mail website, the busiest in the world, has sidebars filled with photographs of, and ruminations on, women in low cut outfits. The Sun celebrates mammaries on Page 3, and 14-year-olds are coerced into sexting pictures of their boobs to boys who are sexually bullying them. Breasts are gorgeous.  They're sexy. And sometimes they're full of milk because they also feed babies, and the thought of being nurtured by 'Mummy' is no doubt a turn on. Or a challenge.

Breast bloke

The actuality is a bit different. Engorged mammaries are not pert and perky: they're swollen with bulging veins and distended nipples, usually attached to a tired, irascible and distinctly unsexy unfemale. At the front end is your child - your genes - attached for a unique intake of nutrients. Many husbands will have had a test or a taste. That's not the same as turning into an adult breast feeder. On returning home from Raving, of which more in a second, an internet trawl unearths ads for paid adult breast feeders and porn sites devoted to lactating women. Interestingly, none of the top hits show a man attached to the breast - is that out of respect for the mother or the baby?

Raving, by Simon Paisley Day, is a cut and paste of every play about three couples escaping the rat race for a weekend in the middle of nowhere. Think any Ayckbourn, or more recently, The Priory at The Royal Court or Canvas at Chichester. It's text book comic fare and the twist here is that that everyone's having sex except Keith and Briony. She's still breastfeeding their three-year-old and giving Keith the leftovers, but when pushed by her mates into offloading both barrels for Keith, they have sex for the first time since the baby. She's Keith's again! The walls shake with their lungings. It's all a bit Freudian. I'm an 'anything goes' person normally, but found the competitive, casual, sexualisation of motherhood discomfiting.

In conclusion: A stellar cast includes TV favourites, Robert Webb, Sarah Hadland and Tamzin Outhwaite. Bel Powey reprises her Jumpy role as a difficult teen, and Nicholas Rowe as posh SAS man, Charles, delivers the best lines. It's the sort of play the Royal Court would do brilliantly, and Hampstead does well enough.


References
Hampstead Theatre, Tickets

Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue,
 London NW3 3EU