|
|
 |
| |
Night out with the Boyz leaves issues in the closet
REVIEW: TORY BOYS
Soho Theatre
THE National Youth Theatre opened its ambitious 2008 programme in the Soho Theatre on Monday with Tory Boyz, by James Graham.
They have 14 plays in the current repertoire being performed in London, the Midlands and the North-west. Come the weekend, some of them will be singing God Save the Queen at the close of the Olympic Games in Beijing, when Mayor Boris takes custody of the flag until it is unfurled here in 2012.
Tory Boyz is a clever, worthy effort to convey the ethos of David Cameron’s new Tory party by setting the main characters in a contemporary Conservative MP’s private office within the Palace of Westminster.
Sam (Shaun Rivers), a research assistant, is suffering the pains of sexual self-denial. His nose is smelling the atmosphere outside the closet, but he remains firmly within. His dilemma is: What is acceptable to Tory loyalists, in spite of metropolitan inclusiveness and tolerance?
Sam believes his Parliamentary ambitions could plummet if he comes out. Yet, he muses, Ted Heath became PM. Sam is Heath’s alter ego and the action shuttles between now and the 1950s. Heath eventually became Tory chief whip, monitoring the peccadilloes of Tory MPs on a secret card-filing system. His card was blank.
Generally unapproachable, frosty, mother-dominated, retreating into music, many wondered: Was the PM gay? He gave out signals of unfulfilled yearning. He seemed to be under a perpetual cold shower.
Hamish McDoodle makes him a barren and lonely figure. Sam engages with the boisterous class of teenagers and teases some political actualities from them. Most would rather vote in a reality TV show than a general election.
Nicholas (Dan Ings), is the head of office. At heart, a nasty overconfident, rash, self-seeking type, who lived like bacteria on the body politic – a fixer recognisable as a would-be Whitehall insider. Sam realises his dilemma.
A lot more could be said on the consequences of coming out and wanting to be a Tory MP, although Alan Duncan, that astute Tory front bencher, was there with his recently acquired civil contracted partner – and the openly gay chairman of the Greater London Authority. They seemed to enjoy it.
But Tory Boyz throws up some unanswered questions.
Until September 13
0871 663 2500 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
