A potentially interesting idea, which is let down by a poor script with an unintended negative message.

Bi Bi Baileigh is a 1 man show depicting a young veterinary student living in London. Baileigh identifies as a gay man “and proud of it” but he finds himself lonely and longing for a boyfriend.

This show is part of the “Boys! Boys! Boys!” series at the Kings Head Theatre. Five shows which have men at their core but curated by female producers hoping to give a feminine perspective and view on issues such as queer history, toxic masculinity, and culture wars. The show is both written and performed by Isaac Verrall and directed by Izzy Edwards.

This production is quite short at only 50 minutes, and this means it is very limited with how deep it can actually explore the different topics that it surfaces. This lack of depth means that what your left with is a story that has all the hallmarks of a homophobic cautionary tale about young guys who go astray before they find the woman they are meant to be with. All that you need is a literal “come to Jesus” moment at the end, and this would be a synopsis of a show that the Westboro Baptist Church could be proud of.

I am certain that this mirroring of homophobic tropes is entirely unintentional and they were in fact trying to tell a progressive story about the fluidity of sexuality and how love and attraction does not need to be so entirely wrapped up with gender expression, however that is not the story that was actually told. Instead, we get a threadbare story about a young unhappy gay man who is unlucky in love. He then has a drunken liaison with a woman, whom he subsequently goes on a date with and finds very attractive. The phrase often said to many a gay man comes to mind “Maybe you just need to meet the right girl”.

Bizarrely, for a show entitled “Bi Bi Baileigh”, the word bisexual is not mentioned once. Straight and gay are, and there is mention of the gender of the person you’re attracted to not mattering, but there isn’t any greater exploration of the necessity or not of labelling your sexuality. The first half of this show is entirely about Baileigh essentially being lonely and wanting to be with someone rather than just having hook-ups. By the time the inciting incident of him sleeping with a woman occurs, we have very little time left to actually explore the ramifications of this. A character re-exploring their sexuality years after they thought they had already done so and coming to a solid conclusion, could have been interesting, but just as this seems like it is about to begin the show is over.

I feel like there are the bones of an interesting story here, but instead of the interesting topics and ideas being explored further, we get interludes into Greek mythology and the silliness of 9-year-olds dating. While these are perfectly pleasant stories, they didn’t really add much to the show, and with its limited running length, the time could have been perhaps used more fruitfully elsewhere.

One positive that I do have about this show is the performance of Isaac Verrall as the titular Baileigh. It isn’t easy to maintain the interest of an audience when it is just yourself on stage, but he manages to do this easily, and gracefully managed to recover after a few dialogue slippages. A particular highlight was Verrall’s acting after Baileigh gets ghosted by the man of his dreams. He wonderfully portrays the heartache, neediness, and loneliness that Baileighwas feeling and really made me care about this character.

Apart from the weakness of the story, the script did have some genuinely funny moments. While there certainly weren’t enough jokes to consider this show a comedy, it was still entertaining enough through these humorous lines and engaging performance by Verrall.

There were some interesting choices made for this production, most of which I don’t think were successful, and some of which were plainly confusing. The set design was a simple chair with rubbish and general detritus on the floor including party poppers and crumpled paper. This production takes places in a number of different locations, and I’m not at all sure which location this set was meant to be portraying. Some of the lighting changes as well seemed weirdly timed and didn’t seem to match up with the changing of locations and early in the show Baileigh goes into the audience, where he isn’t lit at all.

This production feels like it could eventually grow into an interesting and engaging show, but it would take a lot of work, a longer run time or a tighter written script, and should perhaps consider if it is accurately portraying the message that it wants to put out.