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The Green, Green Grass of Home: Mr Jones An Aberfan Story - Finborough Theatre

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A life of hope and promise, interrupted, lies at the heart of Mr Jones: an Aberfan Story. The play follows two young people in Aberfan before and after the disaster that killed 144 people, including 116 children. It’s an emotional coming-of-age tale of intersecting lives, family, love, and the shock of tragedy. With two vivid performances and strong characterisations, you feel immersed in 1960s Welsh small-town life. It’s now running at the Finborough Theatre , after performances at the Edinburgh Festival and across Wales.  The Aberfan disaster is well known in the UK but perhaps less so elsewhere. The facts of the tragedy are confined to the programme notes rather than in the piece. On 21 October 1966, the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip on a mountain above Aberfan engulfed a local school, killing many. The play avoids the causes and negligence, instead focusing on those working and building lives in the town.  Writer-performer Liam Holmes plays Stephen Jones, a...

Gay Gore: Sex/Crime @sohotheatre


At a point early on in Sex / Crime, the lights go dark in a room covered in plastic with a rubber floor, and all you can hear are the screams. The mind is left to imagine just what pre-negotiated terror is unfolding. Until it becomes clear, nothing is happening, and we can all laugh. Part tease and part terror, the piece unfolds against a backdrop of gay fetishism and modern-day neuroses. It’s currently playing at the Soho Theatre upstairs.

Written and performed by Alexis Gregory, he’s visiting a man with a specialism, who goes by the name of A (Jonny Woo). He provides a service of reenacting the works of famous gay serial killers for the right fee. Just the thing for a man who is bored with his life and searching for the next extra special thrill.  With the promise of experiencing what it was like to be a victim of one of these killers. Or as close as far as health and safety regulations allow.

If gay serial killers and the people who fetishise them seems a queasy topic for a night out at the theatre, the subsequent comedy that arises from the setup serves to diffuse the tension and apprehension about what comes next. Everyday household objects such as a toilet brush or a frypan are lying about. Are they implements of terror or are we just expecting the worst given our preconceptions about what thoroughly modern inner London gay men get up to?

Apart from messing with your mind, the comic moments shock and awe you with their speed and relentlessness. The comedy serves to focus on the contradictions of modern gay life. Gay men are now free to do whatever they want.  But they’re still bound in chains, gagged, drugged, or just little fucked up.

Directed by Robert Chevara, Sex/Crime is at the Soho Theatre until 1 February.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️



Photos by Matt Spike



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