☆★★★★ No Sweat
Vicky Moran’s
play, No Sweat, is a fascinating and hard-hitting insight into homelessness
amongst the LGBTQ+ community. Cleverly constructed from a series of real
stories and verbatim interview clips, Moran smartly reveals the awkward
realities of the world of gay saunas and ingeniously explores the lives of
three young men forced to seek accommodation there – part of the forgotten
generation of homeless youth.
Cleverly
inviting us into the sauna, Flex, where we sit around the walls of the room in
a quasi-immersive experience, albeit with our clothes on! We meet Tristan, a
posh boy from Surrey, Alf, an old hand from Wales and Charlie, a Pakistani asylum-seeker
– all gay, all dealing with family conflict, and homeless.
We learn of
their peripatetic lifestyles and how the sauna becomes a hub to temporarily
solve their housing crisis. We also hear of their gut-wrenching experiences in dealing
with the bigotry of families coming to terms with their sexuality. In a series of
expertly orchestrated monologues, Manish Gandhi as Charlie, James Haymer as Alf
and Denholm Spurr as Tristan tell of their experiences. All give frighteningly
emotional, almost filmic performances as unspeakable cruelty is revealed in a
quasi-documentary technique. Gandhi’s tale of corrective rape and revolting
beatings is something that I will remember for a long time. It was a stunningly
brilliant scene, as were each character’s exposition of what can only be
described as inexcusable abuse.
Vicky Moran
also directs her work with great subtlety and ultimate compassion, never
softening the point but ingeniously exploiting the closeness and familiarity that
builds between the men. This is an ensemble on top form!
I must also
mention the super-stylish design of Flex by Alex Berry, an equally stunning
soundscape by James Ratcliffe and lighting by Tanya Stephenson.
No Sweat is
not an easy watch. But it is a correctly exigent piece that should not be
ignored.
No Sweat
runs at The Pleasance from 4 to 29 February 2020
Tickets: https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/no-sweat/performances
Tickets: https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/no-sweat/performances
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