Happy Ending ☆☆☆☆
Fantasies are slippery things. Do you want what you want because you can’t have it? If you get what you want, will you still want it? Happy Ending by Ronnie Larsen at The Garden Theatre Summer Festival is a tricksy, fun, slap on the butt that manages to embrace complicated thoughts for delicious comic effect if you are happy to be teased.
Andy (Sean Huddlestan) is trying to create a successful and respectable massage business. Then along comes hot hetero Rick Miller (Michael Batten). What happens next has more twists and turns than a tango on Strictly. Is Rick Andy’s ultimate straight fantasy? Is he a heterosexual male trapped in an unhappy marriage craving to be touched by someone who actually wants him? Or is he a cop with a MAGA sticker on his bumper out to destroy Andy’s reputation with a bit of queer baiting?
More importantly, is this a play about the fantasies of the two main characters, or a satire of gay fantasies? Just when it seems conclusive a suspicion suddenly starts to form. Is this play about the characters or about the audience? Are you the one who is being played?
The two main characters skilfully zing back and forth between confession and revelation about who they really are and what they really want. . But more than once, just as conviction is growing that true selves have been revealed, the curtain (or in this case the towel) is pulled away to reveal…well….more. Some skillful physical and verbal maneuvering from the cast ensures that a glimpse of honesty is mirrored by a glimpse of a little more skin. As the clothes slide off is it going to prove that naked honesty is sexier than anything else? Will reality trump fantasy?
It’s a two-man play that lasts exactly 60 minutes, the length of a massage. Despite rather nasally American drawls that should have been dropped faster than the protagonists’ pants the quality of the performances soon kicks in along with the deceptively clever writing. Elements of the absurd ellipse pleasingly around the baring of human foibles. Its silliness is wonderfully necessary because the fantasies of others so often seem silly to those who do not participate in them. If you are prepared to accept that your fantasies might be equally silly, then it’s time for your Happy Ending.
Written by Ronnie Larsen
Directed by Peter Bull
Review by ANDREW HEBDENQueerguru Contributing Editor ANDREW HEBDEN is a MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES graduate spending his career between London, Beijing and NYC as an expert in media and social trends. As part of the expanding minimalist FIRE movement, he recently returned to the UK and lives in Soho. He devotes as much time as possible to the movies, theatre, and the gym. His favorite thing is to try something (anything) new every day.
