Soho Boy – Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Picture: Nick Brittain Photography

Soho Boy continues at theSpace @ Symposium Hall – Annexe, Edinburgh until 27 August 2022.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Paul Emelion Daly’s one person musical Soho Boy covers familiar territory. Young gay man moves to London, discovering the bright lights of Soho, desperate for love, meets a man into chemsex, gets dumped, experiments with chemsex, HIV diagnosis and along the way tries to become a cabaret chanteuse. There is an awful lot going on – too much for the 50-minute timeslot. Some serious issues are skimmed but never fully developed dramatically or in song.

The score is pleasant and varied though undramatic and without any standout numbers. However, as a composer Emelion Day shows real promise and I would like to see what he’d come up with exploring a theme in depth rather the whirlwind tour we get here.

Owen Dennis, a recent graduate from Italia Conti, gives an assured and charismatic performance as Spencer and sings very well. It certainly is a notable achievement at the start of his career to hold the audience’s attention in a solo show.

I have a feeling that the piece might work better as a two-hander with another actor playing the other characters who appear. It might make for more realised scenes rather than the exposition necessary in a one person play.

Keith Paterson