Jake Newhouse (Tom Kay) is a “seduction machine”, but Ishtar Madigan (Rebecca Blackstone) would “rather fuck the photocopier”. She’s a feminist scholar who writes about video games; he’s a misogynist podcaster plying pickup techniques to incels under the sobriquet Guy DeWitt. Their lives were entangled when his online followers trolled her. When she tried to fight back she was sued, leaving her penniless and sleeping in her office. The staging underscores the combination of division and connection: Jake’s flat dotted with pizza boxes on one side; Ishtar’s clothing-strewn office on the other.
In Australian writer (and Guardian columnist) Van Badham’s play, banging Denmark is Jake’s goal: he claims he can seduce any woman but he is obsessed with Anne (Maja Simonsen), a Danish librarian immune to his tactics. Who better to help him than a feminist? Plus, he knows Ishtar is desperate for cash, because DeWitt is the very troll who sued her. Thus begins a saga of lust, desperation and morality. It draws in Ishtar’s former student, naive Denyse (Jodie Tyack), who finds herself inexplicably attracted to Jake while stringing along her best friend Toby (James Jip), whose unrequited love leads him to explore the pickup artist world.
