The Olivier and BAFTA Brit award-winning queer writer MICHAEL WYNNE has a new play that is opening in London this week. CLIVE is a deliciously dark comic story about Thomas, a single gay man who works alone at home. Well, not totally alone as there is his best friend and loyal confidant Clive, who is actually a 6’5″ cactus plant.

Then the COVID pandemic changed the whole concept of working at home from a luxury to a necessity. As Thomas’s life begins to unravel and the structure of his work falls away, the distance from his colleagues no longer feels safe and convenient, and the play draws on the tension between our need to feel emotional connection and our reliance on technology to do so.

CLIVE explores our need for connection in a time when more people are isolated and technology is pushing that forward.

Queerguru talks with Michael Wynne on the eve of the play’s First Night, before any reviews are in BUT it smells of success from where we are sitting.