UNDETECTABLE ☆☆☆☆☆
KINGS HEAD THEATRE
It is extraordinary to think that perhaps within the living memory of some fellow theatregoers, that the Lord Chamberlain would have censored the very concept of Undetectable, let alone the practical reality of it on stage. A Taste of Honey (Royal Court Theatre 1958) apparently caused a furore amongst the censors for merely containing an openly gay character.
Cut to 2019 at the Kings Head theatre and the new play by Tom Wright, ‘Undetectable’, presents us with an hour and ten minutes of the most intimate portrait between two guys, pre, post and during coitus. Clothes are rarely worn and shed quickly. Sexual positions are tried out and reconfigured – sometimes with and sometimes without the concealment of a duvet. All the messy factors of gay sex are presented up close and personal in this living room sized venue. Far from being voyeuristic it allows you to experience a direct and truthful account of all the issues two gay men bring with them whilst negotiating sex and relationships.
Lex is twenty-seven, white and channels his personal demons through physical fitness. He is a personal trainer with a body of a god. Bradley meanwhile is twenty-eight, black and feels out of place on the gay scene in terms of race and class. They have been out partying and “tonight is going to be the night” where a three-month relationship is to lead on to something more – if only they can find some condoms.
The set is equally to the point – with an audience on three sides it consists purely of a raised bed, lit like a shrine, its bright red sheets the colour of lust itself. Rikki Beadle-Blair is both director and designer on this show has created the most perfect arena for the themes of Undetectable to be presented. This is their domain, their territory in which the ups and downs, the messy, the emotional, the bitchy, the self-destructive, the confessional, the political and the personal can all be played out, declared, tested and re-presented through highly choreographed bed scenes and as their characters arc through flashback and role play.
Through rapid fire dialogue, a host of subjects are covered including race, friendships, Chemsex, HIV status and how medical advances are changing the game for some (Bradley says, “It’s about sticking and keeping each other safe”.) Lex also delivers one of the most lucid and compelling testimonies of the strength and power in being a bottom “You choose to override the system and allow yourself to surrender and feel pleasure”.
The casting is perfect and precise: Freddie Hogan brings an articulate but sensitive portrayal of ‘Lex’. His physicality is spot on – strong but oh so flexible. The slightly leaner ‘Bradley’ is written to be more camp and highly articulate and Lewis Brown delivers this with energy and enough restraint that we can see the vulnerability beneath.
Rikki Beadle-Blairs terrific direction provides forensic clarity to each scene and a cracking momentum which Queerguru would dare to say is his signature style having seen a similar approach in ‘Riot Act’. The true power of the emotional detonation in the twist at the end, however, is lost slightly on the audience as we have no time to process it, no time to grieve with Lex; a lighting change and pow, we are onto the final section – it may be a timing/pacing issue that will work itself out as the play continues its run. The show certainly has the potential power to make you cry but slightly mistimes its moment.
Either way, this is an extraordinary new play that packs a vast amount into a short space of time, delivered with rapier sharp humour whilst keeping it focussed on the “simple but endlessly complex” connection of two guys falling in love. Ultimately, it is the optimism of the piece that marks it out as special, as Tom Wright says in his recent Queerguru interview; “it’s about recovery, it’s about hope.”
https://www.kingsheadtheatre.com/ UNTIL APRIL 6TH 2019
REVIEW: JONNY WARD 