REVIEW: Corn & Me (This Isn't About Corn) at The Bread & Roses Theatre, 14 – 17 August 2024

"An open-hearted performance, taking us from offbeat comedy to confused turmoil." ★★ ½

Let's get one thing straight, Corn & Me (This Isn't About Corn) by Tiwai Muza is staggeringly brave and deeply important. It deals head-on with an issue few care to acknowledge, let alone write an hour long show about. Porn and its far-reaching effects, from those who work in it and those who consume it, are maybe not quite so taboo anymore, but they are often brushed under the carpet, or off the screen. And none more so than the issue of its massive influence on young men.

As Tiwai correctly mentions, a third of all internet usage is for porn. It's riddled through X (formerly Twitter). It's a major presence everywhere, a hidden-in-plain-sight parallel. It's part of everyday life. In fact, it's part of the fabric of humanity, and always has been. It sits between us and we don't talk to it. Some civilizations and societies were, and are, less shy, but in the modern-day West, we tend to suffer with squeamishness and the echoes of shame. That's what makes Tiwai's monologue all the more important. The fact that he then does it without any judgement is truly excellent.

So let's get to the bones of it. This one-man confessional show tells the semi-autobiographical story of Tiwai's relationship with porn, from childhood discovery, through messy teen years, and into lonely adulthood, where it spirals into an addiction that lands him in a therapist's chair. He's finally seeking help after the problem has deprived him of a chance to find romance or any meaningful connections. He's finally saying the words "I am a porn addict."

As Tiwai perceptively puts it though, "it's not one of the cool addictions." And that's exactly what makes it more urgent, because, as glorified as some of those other addictions may be, they are far more visible. But where is the line when it comes to something kind of normal like porn and natural like masturbation? These are genuine questions that are too often buried under banter or embarrassment. Tiwai tackles them head-on in an open-hearted performance, taking us from offbeat comedy to confused turmoil.

The monologue is tonally diverse enough to keep us engaged for the 60-minute runtime, and any nerves he has can be channelled nicely into the therapist's chair.

We get a good selection of scenes, supplemented by some really effective light design, that take us from his imagination and into his memory, via snippets of Sexcetera. There's a nice moment where his addiction is personified as Gollum, sat in the therapist's chair, convincing him not to let go of his "precious" porn.

But personally, I think it could have benefitted from more raw detail on the slow decline into addiction. People with this kind of struggle can find themselves knee-deep for hours upon hours, to the detriment of their work, relationships, and home life. It's definitely there in this piece, but I wonder whether it could have gone further to really hammer it home, though this is of course an entirely personal story, and it depends how much its author wants to embellish or reveal.

All that said, it's rare to see men, and – let's face it – especially straight men, young or old, engaging so proudly with their feelings in this way, and it's super important that we all do so. For that, I absolutely applaud Tiwai for such work here. It's thoughtful, insightful, and honest.

All in all, though I think there are some weaker elements in the show, it has the potential to be a truly seminal one. No pun intended.

Corn & Me (This Isn't About Corn) by Tiwai Muza

Directed by Laurence Belcher

The Bread & Roses Theatre, 14th – 17th August 2024

Box Office: https://www.breadandrosestheatre.co.uk/whats-on.html

Reviewed by Alix Owen