Shooting Star continues at the Two Brewers, London until 23 November 2024.
Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩
The story of an actor heading to Hollywood with dreams about becoming a huge star is not an uncommon one, especially in the world of musicals. Also common is for the quest for stardom to take an unexpected route – although the world of gay porn is a less travelled route both for actors, and for musical theatre.
In Shooting Star, Indiana country boy and struggling actor Taylor (Conor O’Cuinn) seeks to cover his bills by performing as a gogo dancer at a gay club. But the proprietor, Divina de Campo’s Mr Sue, is also a creator of adult entertainment and soon convinces Taylor to utilise his acting talents for more niche, but lucrative, endeavours.
The rapid ascendancy to stardom brings with it encounters with several other characters, from Alex White’s Jesse Apollo, a fellow porn star to whom Taylor becomes attracted, to James Grant (Jonny Woo), an older performer who feels forced out of an industry which has changed beneath his feet.
Book writer Florian Klein has knowledge of the industry, having worked in the adult entertainment industry under the name of Hans Berlin. One imagines that it’s from his experience that the descriptions of performance-enhancing drug taking and reliance on performers’ social media accounts derives. Klein reuses his performance name when taking on the role of predatory producer Martin Lords, who signs Taylor to an exclusive contract that brings him the fame he’s always desired at the expense of the relationships he has previously made.
But while Klein’s script has the whiff of authenticity about it, the needed top notes of originality are missing. Despite being set in a particular subculture of the entertainment market that is rarely dramatised, the story beats a familiar path. That sense of unoriginality is not allayed by songs (by Thomas Zaufke, with lyrics by Erik Ransom) that often feel like retreads of the sort of songs with which RuPaul’s Drag Race stars are tasked with writing verse lyrics.
The songs aren’t helped by the musical’s lead, O’Cuinn, being the least accomplished singer of all the soloists, often struggling to retain the key when holding long notes. De Campo, meanwhile, is quite clearly the most accomplished performer of the company, but the strictures of her role mean that she is underutilised throughout Act I. An Act II shift, in which she becomes the MC of an awards ceremony, helps convey what de Campo is capable of when permitted to bring her full range of talents into play.
Perhaps the most intriguing of the play’s subplots is also its most underused. Jonny Woo’s James Grant sings eloquently (in ‘Those Golden Days’, the show’s most effective number) of his nostalgia for the industry as he knew it. The undercurrent in his performance, of a porn star finding himself rejected by an industry that is not only youth-obsessed but has changed beyond recognition, provides an insight and point of view that is lacking elsewhere.
Without that thread, Shooting Star loses the spark that it so sorely needs. For those for whom shirtless males and occasional flashes of nudity compensates for paucity elsewhere, the musical may provide some entertainment. For everybody else, it’s just flaccid.
Scott Matthewman
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