“I don’t like small rooms” is the first line of this beautifully performed one-man show from Richard Fry. Me neither, but we’ll come back to that.
Fry takes us on a journey through the life of a man who has been a victim all his life. Based partly on Fry’s own life, it begins from very early childhood, and the shocking revelation that the character’s bullying alcoholic father threw him against a wall when he was two, breaking his shoulder. This sets a life pattern, and he is also eventually a victim of violence and homophobic abuse from his formerly close older brother, pupils at his school and eventually, his lover.
This is no mere monologue. It’s written in a mixture of verse styles, from iambic pentameter to rap. Some of the rhyming stuff jangles a bit, but some of it is very exciting and often lyrical. Neither is it a totally sombre piece. There’s much humour, and Fry delivers it with the dead pan timing of an accomplished stand- up. Some of it, and the anecdotes that inspire it, is very dark humour indeed. “Thank God for epilepsy” is one punch line. And when his first boyfriend is stolen from him by his “fag hag” who he knows was badly sexually abused by her family as a child, his retort is to tell her that the boy looks like her uncle.
The “fag hag” diatribe elsewhere in the play is slightly disturbing. Fry makes much play (and laughter) out of the fact that all women who hang around gay men and gay clubs only do it because they are fat and ugly. As well as being untrue, the vitriol and venom with which he spits this section out makes him as big a bully and bigoted as the characters who have oppressed him down the years. I may be being unfair – Fry is not playing himself, but a character, and I guess the fact we don’t like every aspect of that character makes it well-rounded.
This is well worth a look, and although I feel the piece doesn’t sufficiently build in tension to the stories inevitable conclusion in the circle of violence, it’s informative and moving.
Which brings me back to the small room. This is a very small room. It wasn’t a venue but a bar last year. In my opinion, it is totally unsuited to being a theatre space. Hot, claustrophobia and cramped (it was a full house) I sat on a step with nothing to lean back against unable to see huge sections because of the inadequate rake in the audience. What is the point? Is it fair to charge people to endure this – and in spite of the excellence of the material here, it was obvious that some people were pretty pissed off.
Still, the applause was hearty and generous and the piece held our attention. Maybe I’m the inadequate rake in the audience.
[Robin T. Barton]
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