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Boy Out The City

 
Mel Evans Review by Mel Evans 3 Published: 12 Nov 2021 Turbine Theatre Show Dates: 9 Nov 2021-13 Nov 2021

Boy out the City at Battersea’s Turbine Theatre is a solo piece performed by Declan Bennett. In it, he explores his experience of lockdown in an Oxfordshire village. The isolation brings with it a struggle with alcohol and loneliness and this triggers a battle with some familiar mental health demons.

Bennett is a likeable, engaging and energetic performer

He revisits pivotal moments from his past - homophobic bullying at school, discovering his love for performing, hiding his sexuality, finding liberation in the big city, and the lonely fight against testicular cancer.

The struggle culminates in a climactic epiphany in which he makes a life-changing realisation.

Bennett is a likeable, engaging and energetic performer, nicely blending prose and verse in his writing. He has a tendency to overuse the bitter end of his emotional palate (hardly surprising, perhaps, given the resentment he’s portraying), but this is punctuated with moments of longing, confusion, vulnerability, humour and real joy.

There is a lot here to like - and some nicely portrayed lockdown behaviour that many of us will recognise in one way or another.

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The Blurb:

Declan Bennett, star of ITV’s new detective drama The Long Call, makes his writing debut with an intimate, autobiographical one-person show.

Boy Out The City follows Declan as he moves out of the Big Smoke to a sleepy Oxfordshire village and struggles to adapt to life alone in the pandemic. Through countless sleepless nights, we delve into his past as he attempts to lay old ghosts to rest.

From his Catholic school days in Coventry, to discovering his sexuality in the 90s, to falling in love and escaping to the countryside, this is the story of a man in search of identity, while baking copious amounts of banana bread.

Boy Out The City explores numerous male health issues, as Declan discusses his experiences of living with anxiety and his diagnosis of testicular cancer in his 20s.