“Paul Bradshaw’s presentations of contemporary gay life contain glimmering moments which indicate a more cutting story underneath.“
Following a successful run at the Park Theatre, a double bill of Paul Bradshaw’s plays Tell Me Straight and Aggy have made their way back to the King’s Head Theatre. Both offer glimpses into contemporary queer life, Tell Me Straight following a man with a habit for sleeping with ‘straight’ men, Aggy telling the story of a couple moving in together as one attempts to rise in the art world.
There are hints of a rich life in the character of Him. Bradshaw himself plays Him, who carries himself with a twinge of charm and flirtation, allowing us to see how he ends up in his string of situations with straight men. There is undoubtedly something about his character that makes him both unique and accessible to these kinds of men. His life is pinned by these moments, and we can begin to understand it as a habit which ultimately holds himself back from understanding his real desires. It’s a common trope in gay characters, and Bradshaw does explore it with some good humour. The insecurity that underpins this goes a bit less explored.
Over the course of the show, Bradshaw’s performance of Him began to feel a little too restrained. It felt as though there was something under the surface that we never got to fully explore. This was felt in the writing too – it needed just that bit more. More worldbuilding, even just in the small details (which is in one instance done really well describing a scene in a gentleman’s club in Soho) to give us a richer image of the life and past of this character and the men he found himself with. More commitment to his wit and sexuality. More development of the characters other than the men he slept with. His friend, only seen through voicemails, felt underexplored, and her fall out with him never felt completely clear.
Aggy poses an interesting provocation of the use of identity politics for personal gain. “You can’t self-identify as poor or black” says Mahlik (Jean-Luke Worrell) to his boyfriend, Lawrence (Matthew Jordan). Though some East London creatives may challenge the former, the point made harshly exposes the ways in which many people have come to understand identity in an almost competitive sense. It’s uncomfortable, and it works. It shows us exactly where Bradshaw’s writing can take us when it is unafraid to do so. Much of the rest of the play feels similarly restrained. It would have been impactful to see Lawrence undergo more of a transformation onstage, and it would’ve been interesting to see if there were some of the more earnest parts of his gender exploration.
The set comes to life more in Aggy, Lawrenes’ apartment accentuated with artwork, including a massive biro pen. The presentations of the online world used some captivating projections, although the use of the online world sometimes felt like a bit of a limit to the heart of the story. This isn’t a problem unique to Bradshaw—stories on stage and on screen often struggle to visually critique our use of social media accurately to how we experience it, often feeling like a mimic of the real thing. It’s a difficult thing to do, and it’s not that it doesn’t work at all here, but it definitely takes us out of the world of the play for a moment. It makes me question how much we need to represent the screen onstage so viscerally. As much can be said about our interaction with screens without us, the audience, seeing the whole screen on stage, just like with Mahlik’s functioning zoom call in the background of a scene, which was a subtle but effectively modernising touch.
Bradshaw’s writing is strongest when it breaks into characterful descriptions. Allowing his stories to break into this more would allow a clearer understanding of his characters’ contexts, without being overly expositional. More significantly, there is a bubbling feeling under his stories – perhaps a frustration – which all too often gets pinned on the esteem of the characters he writes. A large part of this frustration may be about the world they find themselves living in, and it’d be interesting to see Bradshaw tackle that with full, unforgiving force.