BOYS PLAYS REVIEWS - LONDON 2006

Rainbownetwork.com - Charles Pettitt

Shamelessboyz Theatre Company present two one act plays that are both two-handers and both deal with the subject of hero worship, with our protagonists going on a journey, both physically and metaphorically, to deal with some unfinished business.

Boys’ Play by Jack Heifner, receiving its European premiere, concerns two teenagers who take a moonlight flit away to the woods. For Tom it’s a regular occurrence; he’s discovered a private clearing where he can escape reality.

Accompanying him this time is Joe, who has long idolised Tom but has only recently become his best friend. Fuelled by Jack Daniels, the pair skirt round their feelings, talking about their families, their friendship and their hopes and fears for the future.

For Tom his life is one of rebellion, while Joe chooses to conform, keeping his head down in the hope that the truth can be ignored. Both are united in their sexuality, but only one has a plan to escape that particular reality forever.

In turn funny, poignant and dangerous, Boys’ Play manages to perfectly capture that moment in time where we can no longer escape the truth about our sexuality; when hormones and feelings have to be confronted or suppressed.

Matt Firth (Tom) and Phil Price (Joe) are perfectly cast in the leads, both managing that tricky task of portraying teenagers. Everyone loves a bad boy with a sensitive side and Price doesn’t disappoint. Firth meanwhile is a delight; all wide-eyed innocence and a puppy-dog-like eagerness to please.

Together they also manage to convince that they are attracted to each other with the audience hoping that with just one step closer they will kiss. So convincing are they in their roles that you cannot help but become emotionally involved in the inevitably of Joe’s actions.
 
From its opening graphic scene – where we see our two lads having full-on sex – it’s obvious that the second play, Extra Virgin, is not going to be just a walk in the park. In common with Boys’ Play, we soon realise that there’s more than just eye-candy on show, emotions are also laid bare.

Noah and Elias have met on Gaydar, but, thanks to Noah’s intensity, it soon becomes apparent that their evening is going to be much more than just a casual encounter. He wants this to be more meaningful than a one night stand. Essentially, he doesn’t expect a relationship but he wants there to be a mental connection. Cue lots of probing questions and revelations, but just why does Elias not want to talk about his past?

While it has moments of humour, Extra Virgin is essentially a dark examination of why we do things and suggests that history repeats itself and that traits are passed on, with the abused becoming the abuser.

Extra Virgin also makes clever use of our perceptions. We assume that skinhead Elias will have the upper hand, simply because of his physique, and that skinny Noah will be the victim and just another notch on his bedpost. This is mirrored in Noah’s surprise that someone like Elias would ever fancy him.

Like Boys’ Play, the success of Extra Virgin doesn’t just rest on its fine writing and clever plotting. With only two characters to hold our attention, pressure is on the two leads to perform. Fortunately, Graham Townsend as Noah and Gareth Watkins as Elias don’t disappoint. Both convince as abused and abuser and you care for and despise them in turn.

Rarely do cast and script combine to produce something so powerful, involving and thought-provoking and  Extra Virgin doesn’t just stay with you simply because of the factor it’s the second play of the evening.

With its two unique takes on the subject of hero-worship and sexuality, Boys’ Play and Extra Virgin combine to produce that rare thing; an evening of gay-themed theatre that’s engrossing and far more than just simply entertaining. Go see.

QX Magazine - Sasha Selavie

SEDUCTION REVIEWS - CHICAGO 2006

steadstylechicago.com - July 2006

SEDUCTION REVIEWS - MILWAUKEE 2006

Russ Bickerstaff - Vital Source Magazine - March 2006

For a great many people, casual sex is anything but casual. There’s a psychological power in physical intimacy that, quite often, goes far beyond the moment. Playwright Jack Heifner explores the complex relationships between physical and emotional intimacy in a tight little dramatic equation called Seduction. Over the course of its single hour onstage, the play follows a string of casual sexual encounters as they gradually pass from complete strangers at the beginning of the play to people who are a great deal more intimate by the end of it. It’s a fascinating one-hour exploration into the passions and pleasures that make everyone so tragically human.

The current production comes to Milwaukee by way of London. A group of British actors play a series of roles with a captivating presence. The play opens on a nearly bare stage that is lit in shadows. Phil Price is onstage playing a young man who has a brief sexual encounter with a sailor played by Gareth Watkins. It all plays out here: an entire relationship from beginning to end between two people climaxing in a single orgasm and the clean-up afterwards. We then follow the sailor to a bar where he ends up having a sexual encounter with someone he’s hung out with a bit over the course of an evening. The gruff passions of Watkins’ sailor are now met by the rather tragic loneliness of Menno Kuijper’s Lad At A Bar. Kuijper’s character hopes for a relationship to come of the sex, but by scenes’ end he knows better. Kuijper’s Lad At A Bar turns out to be a handyman in the next scene as we see him talking to a man living at the house he works for. He’s a student played by Graham Townsend. The two of them have seen each other around for a while and only now commit to their first serious moment together. One hopes for a more serious relationship, but the pattern is set now. This play is set to be a string of brief intimacies between characters we will only see onstage in two separate scenes. Look at the outline of all ten scenes in the program and you’ll see that the boy at the dock who met with the sailor at the beginning of the play will show-up to complete the cycle at play’s end.

As repetitious as a string of intimacies may seem, playwright Jack Heifner manages to keep it fresh by ratcheting-up the level of intimacy between each successive character in the play up until intermission. The last encounter before intermission is perhaps the most captivating as it reaches into a kind of intimacy that transcends a traditional monogamous romantic relationship between two people.

This far into a theatre season in Milwaukee, it’s really refreshing seeing a group of actual British actors playing Brits onstage. By the last quarter in almost any performing arts season, the Milwaukee stage has heard so many attempts to mutate a Midwestern American accent into a British one that it’s a real pleasure to five British actors playing ten British roles on a bare stage. There’s something really primal and minimalist about the lack of scenery as well. Here we see everything else stripped away but the physical intimacy acted out (usually quite well) between two people. And, in many case we see EVERYTHING stripped away. There IS some tastefully-presented nudity in this production. Hardly gratuitous, it serves to illustrate the power of physical intimacy.

Shamelessboyz’ production of Seduction has closed at the Milwaukee Gay Arts Center. This summer, the production moves to the Bailiwick Repertory Theatre in Chicago. The production runs from June 22 to July 9. It’s worth the drive. Tickets for the Chicago production can be purchased by calling the Bailiwick box office at 773-883-1090 or online at www.bailiwick.org.