Good Boy is a one man play which follows the traumatic journey of a twink (a young looking, boyish gay man) from his first earnest kiss through to his complete loss of innocence. Told with wit, pace, sensitivity and unflinching honesty, this hour long show, based on writer and actor James Farley’s own real life experiences, grips from start to finish and forces us to re-evaluate our usual assumptions about where the fault lines of privilege and prejudice lie.
Told with wit, pace, sensitivity and unflinching honesty, this hour long show grips from start to finish
The eponymous Good Boy looks young for his age and in his quest for affection acquiesces to the constant demands from the men he meets: in short, he must be pliant, submissive… and shaved. He’s naive, open, honest and trusting, all qualities which make him endearing but which also unfortunately mark him out as worryingly vulnerable in the sometimes predatory world of gay dating.
Good Boy remains unnamed but is an immediately loveable character, the human equivalent of his boyfriend’s pink nosed rabbit. His bouncy innocence makes the constant grasping aggression that the world seems intent on throwing at him all the more unbearable, and his incremental submissions to its demands all the more devastating. Despite this, he’s also wickedly funny, peppering this challenging story of misuse and abuse with frequent moments of levity and laughter.
Farley switches deftly between characters, revelling especially in the Manchester accent, and is impressive at portraying the parade of alpha males, bruisers and bears he interacts with. His mimetic skill in generating a sense of the difference in scale between the ‘fun-sized’ twink and his larger ‘tops’ is astounding.
Careful thought has been given to the lighting and sound which, aside from adding to the humour on occasion, guide us through the challenging emotional terrain of this tale. The simple set of a pink rug, two pink chairs and a pink storage box is an unobtrusive and flexible backdrop which subtley washes us in gentle femininity.
One could wax lyrical about the dramatic deconstruction of patriarchy and critical analysis of the threat of toxic masculinity, but the beauty of this play is how Farley presents these abrasive and triggering themes in what is at heart a delightfully entertaining show. In the post show Q&A Farley described how he had been inspired to step off his own destructive spiral by Matthew Lopez‘s play The Inheritance. I have no doubt that his play will prove as inspiring for many generations to come.
