Boy Parts. Soho Theatre.

Eliza Clark’s darkly twisted debut novel Boy Parts is certainly ripe for theatrical reinvention. Written entirely in first person by the magnificently unreliable narrator Irena, it often reads like a scripted monologue. Gillian Greer’s single-hander adaptation lifts chunks of dialogue directly from the book-text, but somehow the spiteful, menacing, malevolence of the psycho-thriller’s deeply amoral central character gets lost. The result is 80-minutes that may well leave the novel’s legions of Gen Z fans feeling shortchanged, and those new to the tale of Irena’s slow descent into dissociative madness scratching their heads in bemusement.

“This is a true story” we are told by way of back projected caption at the outset of Boy Parts. Except, of course, we soon learn that late-20s fetish photographer Irena (Aimée Kelly) is not always capable of separating fact from fantasy. Stuck in a dreary Newcastle bar job, living with a whiny flat mate named Flo and her passive-aggressive partner Michael, Irena spends mornings hungover and afternoons trawling local buses for unattractive (sometimes very young) male models to shoot.

Self-centred, abusive, manipulative, and with a tenuous understanding of consent, Irena’s life is an inverted version of the traditional relationship dynamic between female model and male photographer. She feminises, eroticises, humiliates, and objectifies her targets, reducing them to little more than a series of disembodied, interchangeable, and highly sexualised parts to serve her own carnal gratification. In between photo shoots Irena finds her thoughts constantly hijacked by unwanted and intrusive flashbacks involving blood, a wavy-haired teenager, black bags, and a meat cleaver. But is anything she remembers real, or it is just barely supressed cocaine-fuelled fantasy?

An unexpected email from London gallery owner Stephen invites Irena to submit work for a forthcoming fetish exhibition. Unfortunately, her signature photographic work “Boy With Glass In His Eye” is not quite edgy enough for the show. But would, Stephen muses, she consider submitting a video installation that is just a little closer to the knuckle?

Delighted to be asked and spurred on by revisiting her college photo archives Irena sets her sights on turning Eddie, a short, dumpy Tesco shelf-stacker and wannabee primary school teacher, into her video subject (a better word might be victim). Eddie, who is badly smitten with Irena and drowning in low self-esteem, reluctantly agrees. Unfortunately for Eddie, the only mark Irena likes to leave on the men in her life is a bruise. Things get dark, quickly, aided by a bunny mask and a well lubricated wine bottle.

Greer strips Clark’s central story down to its bare bones, ditching the queer elements underpinning Irena’s connection with Flo and her difficult relationship with her mother. Her consensual affair with a sexually abusive schoolteacher, her frequent drug and alcohol blackouts, and her inability to form any long-standing emotional relationships are referred to only in passing. This paring back of the narrative may make sense structurally, but it takes away much of the character’s explanatory backstory and leaves us struggling to figure out what drives her increasingly unhinged actions. “Does it really matter if I was raped and groomed as a child?” she asks us rhetorically. Well, yes, if you want us to understand this character’s self-sabotaging fantasies, narcissistic sadism, and all-round rapey personality that stuff is kind of important.

Kelly’s Irena, clad in black, perched on Doc Martins and boasting blood red fingernails is, though charismatic and credible, rather more likeable than one encounters in the novel. “I literally have no sense of humour” she says, which is odd because much of the play’s first half is played for laughs. Clark dares us to empathise with her Irena, ratcheting up the character’s caustic putrescence whenever we might be tempted to find common cause. One gets the feeling Greer would rather like us to like her, or at least see her as a victim with whom solidarity is in order.

Peter Butler’s excellent set brings to mind the kind of rectangular black frame into which glossy photos are often embedded, or perhaps the viewfinder on a camera. Back projections bring to life Irena’s intrusive memories in video and vivid pink animation. Christopher Nairne’s lighting combines staccato strobe flashes with a stark single spotlight, a reminder perhaps that there are few places to hide here, either for Irena or her victims. One hopes the forthcoming TV adaptation of Boy Parts, penned by Clark herself, is a little more acidic.

Writer: Gillian Greer (adapted from the novel by Eliza Clark)

Director: Sara Joyce