3 STARS, May 30 – June 17. Commemorating a year since the deadliest single shooter massacre in US history at the gay club Pulse in Orlando, this new play by up and coming talent Gary Thomas tells the tale
Commemorating a year since the deadliest single shooter massacre in US history at the gay club Pulse in Orlando, this new play by up and coming talent Gary Thomas tells the tale
The play centres on Carlo, who moves to Orlando Florida having had the misfortune to grow up in Jacksonville where gay sex was outlawed until as recently as 2003 and where homophobia is still rife. In Orlando he meets the fun loving Jessica who introduces him to both Tom, his new flat mate and lover, and to the infamous gay club, Pulse. It’s somewhere he at last feels free, safe and loved. Most of the action takes place just before the shootings but does not shy away from taking us right in there to that hideous moment when these young people were shot down for simply being different.
The performances by the three actors, Aaron Douglas, Yasmin Holness-Dove and Harold Addo are excellent and perfectly pitched for what is an extremely delicate subject in a very small space. The feeling of claustrophobia is particularly present in the final throes of the play as the characters describe, against the sound of gunshots, the events in which 49 people were killed and 58 wounded in the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter in US history.
So here we are reminded that even where you feel safe, unspeakable ugliness can be lurking just out of view. In the absence of all too recent horrors it might benefit us as an audience to be reminded that potential disaster lurks around every corner, but sadly at this moment in time this feeling of darkness is all too apparent to the majority of us. Of course this theatre company was not to have foreseen the recent terrorist attacks, which give it a painful poignancy.
Courtney Larkin’s simple direction and effective but economic use of the set, and three sensitive performances, give food for thought. This is a small theatre company with a big heart and big ambitions.
N16 Theatre first set up in Stoke Newington with the admirable aim of supporting such ambition – small theatre companies with good ideas but limited resources. In 2015 it upped sticks and moved to a small room above The Bedford pub in SW12, hence the postcode mismatch. In April this year it announced the appointment of Scott Ellis as Artistic Director who, together with Executive Director Jamie Eastlake, is working tirelessly to promote both new and existing writing in an environment that increasingly works against the arts. It deserves your support.
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