Tell Me Straight ☆☆☆☆
Kings Head Theatre, London

Tell Me Straight will sound off-putting to a lot of people. A play about a gay man who has a succession of hopeless relationships with straight men conjures up images of a self-loathing tragic character chasing the impossible, doomed to unhappiness because he would despise anyone who actually liked him. Let’s be clear, queerguru would guide you away from such nonsense. Unless it was an Oscar-winning period drama with breathtaking cinematography and flawless costumes. Thankfully Tell Me Straight is a much more open-hearted and funny piece of human observation about the inability of men to commit to anything that is right for them until they have exhausted all the wrong options

HIm (Paul Bradshaw) uses his hour to tell us about his long and short-term encounters with men looking for someone who will put up with them being, well, a bit useless. There are thousands of self-help books, magazines, influencers, and girl power memes providing women with insights on how to weed out the duds from the Dudley Do-Rights so who else is left for men to be a bit crap with other than gay men. With a warm heart and a theatrical flourish, Him provides the perfect shoulder to lean on, the sympathetic ear to whine in, and the willing body to rub against while these emotional underachievers try to fumble through their feelings. “It’s like I’m a beacon. Some gay lighthouse on the curious shoreline and these straights squint from the distant sea and drift towards me” 

Told in a scattered confessional style, like glimpsing someone’s sexts while sat next to them on the tube, or overhearing their voicemail because the volume on their phone is too loud, the pace is fast and the audience can barely get in a deserving giggle between switches in characters and scene. All the men zipping through or unzipping in Bradshaw’s life are played by one actor (George Greenland). He brings life to each character while embodying the point that all the men are basically the same because they all have one thing in common, Him himself. 

The story is a journey of self-discovery as HIm learns that nothing will change until Him changes. This is no school lesson though. Except maybe if the lesson is Sex Education and includes the dirty jokes that get whispered at the back of the room. Bradshaw manages to be the endearingly puppyish Golden Retriever of the gay world. Greenland magically pops off one end of the stage in one character and appears at the other end transformed by accent, body language and personality. This keeps the claustrophobia at bay in a small space with only two people appearing on stage. The disembodied diva voice of Dani (Stephanie Levi-John) provides much-needed no-nonsense advice to keep the male meanderers in check. Together the three pirouette wonderfully around each other making a small show stretch out to engulf a grateful audience. The ovation at the end was a justified reprimand to those who missed the chance to fill the few empty seats.

Written by Paul Bradshaw
Directed by Imogen Hudson-Clayton
Presented by Gartland Productions
Part of Queer Season 2021
Kings Head Theatre

Review by ANDREW HEBDEN

Queerguru 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.