Best opera I have seen about the celestial embodiment of a gay hook-up app all year. Worth going to see for Christian Lunns singing alone!
The absurdity of the title of this show, mixing the high brow world of opera with the low brow world of hook up apps, made me really interested to see this show. As a previous winner of ‘Best New Musical’ at the Off West End Awards I had high hopes, but also no idea what sort of show I would actually be seeing.
Forgive the pun, but this musical was played far straighter than I had expected. I went into this show expecting camp ludicrousness and corny dick jokes, and instead what I got was a really well put together and sometimes emotional show about gay hook-up culture and the trials and tribulations of experiences on Grindr. The 4 human characters in this show seemed heightened but still very real. While they may fit into the stereotypical archetypes (older closeted man, young horny twink), the characters had more depth and story to them than I had anticipated.
The fact that GRINDR: The Opera made me feel emotional at parts feels quite frankly ridiculous, and yet it did! Particularly the songs “You Can Leave” and “Square One”. That is not to say that there is not any camp fun in this show at all. The mythical side kicks to the god Grindr (yes that is a real sentence) added some brilliant camp side eye and managed to make the often-thankless task of moving set around, a really enjoyable and entertaining part of the show. The STD section with Cupiditas, played by Grant Jackson, was genuinely hilarious. Grant throughout was a highlight whenever he was on stage in what was a minimal speaking role, but he brought the camp and sass that I needed from a show about Grindr.
The absolute stand out of this show is undoubtedly Christian Lunn playing the ethereal embodiment of Grindr. His singing was faultless and incredibly impressive with an upper vocal range. His physicality throughout really matched the other worldly energy of the Grindr character and I truly believed him as an ageless being that feeds off the lustful energy of gay men.
At the risk of sounding a bit of a prude, some of the very frank discussions of sex and lust did shock me a bit. Particularly the song “Cum Dumpster” which I felt perhaps went a little too far in describing what a particular character wants, but I suppose that is in keeping with how blunt of a place Grindr can be. I am sure others would have no problem with it at all, but it did make me feel a little bit uncomfortable in that I really felt that this was not something I should be witnessing. Again, I swear I am not a prude, but the shock value of this number did not seem to add much to the show for me and is the one section of the show that I did not actually enjoy.
The choreography of this show, by William Spencer, is very well done and it is quite a feat to have so many moving parts on stage, all doing different things, without it seeming disjointed or chaotic. Every second a performer was on stage was utilised effectively and it helped to add a wonderful flow to this production.
The original cast album recording is available on iTunes and Amazon Music and I will definitely be listening to some of the tracks in the future. The songs I would recommend you look up to get a feel of the show would be “Wanderlust”, “You Can Leave” and “Load More Guys”.
I would recommend this show to essentially any gay man who has previously used or currently uses Grindr (so 99% of gay men in the UK)* who fancies seeing a very well put together show, with great performances, and great songs. Just be warned that while there is no nudity in this show, there are a lot of graphic and forthright discussions around gay sex.
Grindr the Opera is playing at the Union Theatre until the 8th July.
*not a real statistic.