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Bear with me: Sun Bear @ParkTheatre

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If The Light House is an uplifting tale of survival, Sarah Richardson’s Sun Bear gives a contrasting take on this. Sarah plays Katy. We’re introduced to Katy as she runs through a list of pet office peeves with her endlessly perky coworkers, particularly about coworkers stealing her pens. It’s a hilarious opening monologue that would have you wishing you had her as a coworker to help relieve you from the boredom of petty office politics.  But something is not quite right in the perfect petty office, where people work together well. And that is her. And despite her protesting that she is fine, the pet peeves and the outbursts are becoming more frequent. As the piece progresses, maybe the problem lies in a past relationship, where Katy had to be home by a particular hour, not stay out late with office colleagues and not be drunk enough not to answer his calls. Perhaps the perky office colleagues are trying to help, and perhaps Katy is trying to reach out for help. It has simple staging

Camp as Christmas: Hot Gay Time Machine @Trafstudios

Watching Hot Gay Time Machine by yourself at first is a bit like being the designated driver at a party. You’re just not drunk enough to appreciate it. But this high energy, high camp, gay gore extravaganza grows on you. The piece was a hit at Edinburgh Fringe and now has a brief run on the West End in the downstairs space of Trafalgar Studios.

Written and performed by Zak Ghazi-Torbati and Toby Marlow, the time machine part of the story are the pivotal gay moments of Zak and Toby’s young lives. Mostly this involves gay sex and brief encounters in changing rooms. But from the moment Zak and Toby burst into the theatre foyer introducing themselves, the scene is set for a party of shimmying and sashaying.

The stories are set to music performed by Marlow on keyboard. His lyrics tend to be less innuendo and more in your face. But even if artistically suspect, the filthier he gets the audience only seems to appreciate it more.

Marlow with Lucy Moss had the hit show Six, which was about the ex wives of Henry VIII. That was presented as a Tudor-style Spice Girls show. Here they give us something looser here. In every sense of the word. There’s plenty of audience participation, musical theatre references and life size cut outs of Beyoncé. With all that to contend with, it’s inventive and evocative.

Definitely not for all tastes, you get the sense with such a catchy title it could be the start of an enduring act. If those tiny pink shorts can go the distance.

Co-written and Directed by Lucy Moss, Hot Gay Time Machine is at Trafalgar Studios until 5 January. This Christmas go gay.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


Photos by Pamela Raith

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