Guy: A New Musical at the Turbine Theatre, London.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Stephen Hyde and Leo Mercer’s Guy has been around since 2018. Still billing itself as “A New Musical” like your mid-thirties friend who claims to be 29 on their dating app profile, it has returned from a triumphant regional tour for a final week of performances at London’s Turbine Theatre.
This energetic show tells the story of a charming young gay man named Guy searching for love in a world where complex and beautiful human beings are all too often reduced to a handful of quantifiable attributes and screened out of happiness by an unthinking algorithm, whether computer or human.
We can all relate to feelings of inadequacy colliding with our human need to be loved, and Ben Raymond’s affable portrayal of the protagonist keeps the audience onside throughout much of his struggle with the harsh realities of 21st century romance, though our compassion is robustly tested in his darker and unequivocally immoral moments.
Designer Andrew Exeter and scenic artist Benjamin Adams’ striking set evokes the flashy gaudiness of online dating: that technological sheen behind which it is too tempting for a person to hide all their rough edges. The show explores this world with more sensitivity and nuance than its flashiness and humour might suggest.
Of course, dishonesty is rarely the best policy and has its consequences, but who among us doesn’t strive to always present the best version of themselves? And is the absolutely repugnant, “no fats, no femmes, no Asians” policy of Steve Banks’ bigoted Dom character really preferable simply because he is being honest about what he thinks he wants? The terrible effects of such online abuse on a person’s mental health are not shied away from. For all his faults resulting from his struggle with self-image, Guy is a sympathetic guide through a sometimes dark world the audience might not all know.
Considering the themes of self-hatred, lovelessness, and deception, director Aran Cherkez does a masterful job of keeping the tone from getting too heavy. The aforementioned Banks gives a masterclass in character acting: inhabiting the best and worst prospects of online romance to hilarious effect.
Aarian Mehrabani and Elliott Wooster are both relative newcomers to the stage but turn in brilliant performances as Aziz and Tyler, imbuing them with the amiable energy of old friends from the moment they appear. Despite the ever-present dark side, we feel at home with these characters and are invested in their happiness.
In a prudent act of budget-efficiency, this production does not feature a live band, relying instead on pre-recorded backing tracks. The reasoning behind this is understandable given the complexity of the arrangements, but it does lead to moments of mismatched sound levels and the ghostly feeling of disembodied backing vocals with no discernible origin.
It also seems that the worst of the uncanniness and volume issues occurs at moments when the story – well-structured though it may be – feels a little stretched to fill the two acts. Of course, filling a full-length musical running time with a small budget, cast and stage is always going to be difficult, and Guy fares much better than most.
A key ingredient to its success is Hyde’s wonderful electronic score. Despite the occasional mix issues, the catchy melodies and refreshingly current instrumentation shine through. Musical director Gina Hallums has done a great job of engineering a club-night feel. In some numbers the entire audience bops along with nearly as much commitment as the actors. Self-doubt and buoyant beats are clearly humanity’s common factors.
Ultimately, however, though its themes and music are universal, Guy is proudly a work of queer theatre. Representation is about more than changing one or two details and genders in a classic story and slapping a rainbow flag on the poster. The movement to reflect social diversity in all art is to be celebrated, but tokenism and “very special episodes” surely aren’t enough.
This show is built from the ground up to tell a story unique to the people it celebrates. At the end of the performance, our enthusiastic applause serves as thanks not only to the performers for sharing their talent, but also to the creatives for sharing their story. It is more ambitious in its effort to bring a fresh perspective to the stage than the innumerable revivals and movie adaptations currently on in the West End, and so perhaps justifies its “new” subtitle after all. It’s not perfect, but this is a show that – like its titular character – deserves all the love in the world.
Ian Bowkett
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.