Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Low Down
This is a poised and perfectly imagined story about emerging as bisexual today. It has an engaging heart within it wrapped around a man of confusion. Theatrically we are taken on a journey with the bricks unbuilt in front of us that gives us a clue as to why this man cannot construct a safe wall behind which to successfully hide.
Review
We start with a sodger. Now, in Scotland a sodger is a kid trying to be a soldier. It is a role filled with machismo and prejudice, assumption and given feelings, expressions and thoughts. It’s a bit like a tradition, hand me down clothing, birthright and inheritance. Every male child must at some point, irrespective of how long it has been since the defeat of fascism on a field somewhere on foreign soil, be a sodger.
And here is Sam filled with that machismo, blowing things up, prejudiced, about never being gay, assumptive, that everyone is against them, or difference is a “baddy”, that feelings must be submerged, that he must not express his true self but what people expect of him, and he must never, ever think ever, at all, at any time or actually come out and BE gay.
BI-TOPIA is terribly funny, but it is also incredibly real. I am not gay but have gay children. I cannot tell the tales of their struggles, but I can observe from a distance when people say it was like this and recognise for the children I love, that I saw it. I saw lots of this. But what makes it more than authentic, is that it tackles a subject which for many is quite tough. Bi sexuality. None of my children are bisexual – so far – but I can spot the similarities, and I can see the differences. I make assumptions about neither, I hope. This truly made me think.
And this is where, for me, the joy of theatre comes alive. Sam Danson is not just an authentic voice but a really funny guy. He is not just someone who can spin a yarn, but a really good storyteller. He inhabits each character differently and though some can fall off the gay book cliché shelf, they do exist. A little more subtlety in portrayal might help but for the stupid amongst the population stereotypes are often needed to make them pay attention – and there is far too much prejudice out there, to avoid addressing them. And that is not confined to the straight community.
From his first experience in a toilet, his relationship with his dad and the war experiences of his granddad, we are taken on a voyage of self-discovery where after a few shipwrecks, land on an island with a female friend which is, well a hell of a discovery for him. Peace for him breaks out.
But it is the way in which it is woven in and made real. It is the pauses, the explosions, the soundscape, use of bricks as phones and the artistic skill that mark it out. This is about confusion delivered with clarity. And the theatre has added a piece of debate onto the discussion which makes the case for being heard in a very entertaining manner.
