“by the end I felt as though I had known Rachel and Gavin longer than they had known each other”
My Gay Best Friend opens with Rachel leaving Gavin an answerphone message. She isn’t happy, and calls him every available unflattering word for a gay man. This sets the tone for what is to come, a well-observed look at the close and often contradictory friendship between a gay man and a straight woman. Written and performed by Louise Jameson and Nigel Fairs, the play unfolds as a series of mostly separate monologues, with Rachel and Gavin each telling their side of the story. Their interactions are limited to flashbacks and anecdotes, and there is the delightful sense of watching two equally vivid solo performances occasionally flare up together in ways that are funny, touching, and utterly relatable.
Jameson and Fairs are consummate performers ably served by meticulous direction from Veronica Roberts. Rachel is by turns brittle and outrageous, lively and furious, while Gavin is calmer, gentle and charmingly neurotic. Both are immediately recognisable as realer than real life. Particularly refreshing is that the character of Gavin is a human first, and a gay man second; his is more than another sorry tale of coming out, facing homophobia, and being a victim. In many ways, the dramatic heavy-lifting is framed from Rachel’s perspective and highlighted by her sexually incompatible friend, and the nuanced and particular relationship the two forge.
Jameson and Fairs’ writing is terrific, both very very funny and highly economical. Not a word is throwaway, and, by the end of My Gay Best Friend, I felt as though I had known Rachel and Gavin longer than they had known each other, with all the laughs, tears and trauma that that entails. Through constantly switching back and forth between monologues and flashbacks, the play is able to maintain a terrific, unpredictable momentum that is balanced by an even-handed and completely unapologetic harmony of humour and drama.
My Gay Best Friend achieves all this without much by the way of set or props, and, in doing so, is a standard-bearer for scratch theatre in London today. This play draws its strengths not from showiness or gimmickry, but instead from its sheer quality; excellent writing; careful direction; and performances so lucid that it is now hard to imagine that Rachel and her best friend Gavin are not real humans that are out there somewhere, still bickering after all.
A Curmudgeon’s Guide to Christmas Round Robin Letters
Hope Theatre
Reviewed – 7th December 2017
★★½
“There is a reassuringly relaxed and fun quality to the pair that can’t help but draw us in”
As the Christmas season erupts to dominate the theatre calendar, we can look forward to a stockpile of emails and social media messages to bring in the occasion. The Hope Theatre instead chooses a different path. Focusing on the round robin letters real people have sent over the years, ‘A Curmudgeon’s Guide …’ flicks between the smug, the funny and the tragic from those who choose to update us on their year just gone.
Loosely, the piece is held together through a rough framing device. We are invited into the home of a couple, played by Kate Russell-Smith and Claire Lacey. Over time they have amassed a vast collection of letters from a variety of family, friends and far off acquaintances. They choose to share a few of them with us over the course of just under an hour.
Scott Le Crass’ production begins brightly. The lighting design from Jai Morjaria is comfortable in bathing the play in a glowing, warm tinge. There is a reassuringly relaxed and fun quality to the pair that can’t help but draw us in as they offer us treats and invite us to pull crackers. Some of the initial letters, all collected from a book by Simon Hoggart, are fun and it is a joy to hear some of the outlandishly boastful claims that families have sent over the years. But after a while the repetitious nature of mocking each letter begins to grate. This combines with a poorly developed story behind the characters that fails to draw its audience in.
In Russell-Smith and Lacey, you get the sense of real talent being wasted. Lacey brings a jagged edge to her put downs as Russell-Smith emits a lighter demeanour that is engaging to watch. But they are bogged down with a relationship that is punctuated by increasingly unrealistic stoppages, building to an ending that seemingly had the intention of drawing emotion but comes across as melodramatic and unearned. There is also a hint in parts that the show shares notes of the smugness present in quite a few of the letters.
As an idea there is potentially an interesting concept, but the narrative and conceit are far too separate in execution to make a fully coherent show. Ultimately, ‘A curmudgeon’s guide’ is a muddled package that fails to carry the fun warmth of its beginning.
Reviewed by Callum McCartney
A Curmudgeon’s Guide to Christmas Round Robin Letters
