THIS IS NORMAL at the Old Red Lion Theatre
★★★★
“a nuanced and endearing story that is more personal than political”
Despite new variants circulating and cases supposedly soaring this summer, for most people, COVID feels like a distant memory. A time when we were all told to social distance, wash our hands singing happy birthday, or risked getting in trouble with the police when socialising outside our ‘bubble’.
People’s experiences all differed. But being a single, queer, key worker must have been pretty difficult for the old sex life. What was one to do when dressed up in medical grade PPE by day but wanting to hook up by night? When there were genuine Guardian headlines asking, “Is oral sex more Covid-safe than kissing? The expert guide to a horny, healthy summer”, we really did live through abnormal times.
This Is Normal, written and performed by Stuart Warwick, gives us an insight into the life of a hospital porter in the current day. Life and work is somewhat back to normal after COVID, but there are still some throwbacks to those times (a Zoom Pride sounds particularly dystopic) and lingering effects. Despite working in a hospital filled with people, and the world being open to socialising and dating as freely as one pleases, porter 133, as he’s known, still experiences social isolation.
Warwick’s script is witty and well paced, striking the right balance between humour in botched Grindr dates, bodily fluid puns, and sincerity. As the porter, he is thoroughly endearing and appears very relaxed on stage – recounting his hot and steamy on-shift sexual fantasy as if the audience isn’t there. Most of the action takes place in the hospital itself, with a simple set and costume accurately transporting us to those bleach scented halls. The porter is happy and comfortable in his skin now – but only through being hardened by life’s tough experiences.
“Warwick conveys intense vulnerability, welling up but refusing to cry”
With expressive, doe eyes, Warwick conveys intense vulnerability, welling up but refusing to cry. Something happened in the porter’s youth between him and his dad. It’s unclear whether the vignettes we hear, about his Dad finding his Attitude magazine under the mattress and the like, are the extent of it, or whether there is deeper trauma beneath the surface. Perhaps just those embarrassments, a look or shift in tone, are all that’s needed to cut a young person deep – to make them feel as if their father would rather, given the choice, not have them as his son.
This Is Going to Hurt, the best-selling book made into a TV series, which thrust its author Adam Kay to fame in 2017, is clearly an influence on the setting and the title of the piece. There’s some observational comedy at the expense of patients or the daily running of the hospital, but mostly the setting is by the by. As someone who has actually managed to avoid reading or watching either – it’s difficult to say whether the LGBTQ+ themes explored by Kay also have an influence on This is Normal. Whilst naming the play ‘This is..’ is an obvious bait to draw in the punters, what Stuart Warwick provides is a nuanced and endearing story that is more personal than political. For whilst there are subtle nods to class hierarchy in the hospital between surgeons and porters, this doesn’t come across strongly as a central theme.
This Is Normal feels self assured – a piece that knows what it is, the specific story it wants to tell, and the confidence to do so without overdoing it. A thoughtful and charming play that demonstrates normality really is subjective.
THIS IS NORMAL at the Old Red Lion Theatre
Reviewed on 19th September 2023
by Amber Woodward
