Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Good Boy
James Farley
Genre: LGBTQIA+, Solo Play, Theatre
Venue: theSpace at Surgeons' Hall Theatre 2
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Good Boy bills itself as a shockingly funny debut play. It graphically covers some aspects of gay promiscuity, hook-up apps and the trauma some experience in that arena. Ultimately it shows a very negative, partial view of the gay community with no solutions.
Review
This one man play is very well acted and staged. It can be difficult to sustain an audience’s attention for a whole hour with just one performer and a few props. In Good Boy, James Farley inventively and convincingly portrays a range of gay male characters and one female character, and multiple explicit sexual encounters, using only two pink chairs, a large box and a small number of props. There is also a sound track of music and effects that enhances the scenes and helps him vividly create some titillating and some disturbing sequences and pictures, as well as some highly comedic moments. For example, early on, his first gay date prefers it if the main character “Boy” is intimately shaved, and being new to this practice he struggles to shave his arse and resorts to YouTube video tutorials with mixed success. This blend of comedic and sobering, innocent and sinister, is well balanced throughout the play. The creators are brave to be so explicit and graphic about some sexual encounters and their physical aftermath.
As for the story, it is an account of a series of gay hook ups. The play follows “Boy” from his first gay sexual encounter as a young adult, through a number of hook ups via dating apps, in apartments, clubs, car parks and bedrooms. He has hopes that his first lover might develop into a relationship. The lover is demanding and makes very specific requests of what he’d like to do, which, sometimes nervously, sometimes excitedly, “Boy” consents to (including shaving himself). “Boy” discovers something very disturbing about his first lover, which we do not have spelled out until the end.
After the disturbing discovery, we see “Boy” have a handful of other graphic sexual encounters, again, all consensual, with gay guys of varying degrees of cleanliness, drug habit and opportunism. Some encounters “Boy” seems to have relished or been aroused by, others he was persuaded or cajoled into, others troubled by, but for all he was free to leave at any time. Some lead to minor sexual injuries or infections. The sequence of hook ups becomes rather repetitive and seem designed to be titillating and shocking to get the play noticed, rather than adding to a deeper understanding of why “Boy” is doing all this, and, if he wanted to stop, how he might do that. The two big questions are will “Boy” find a loving relationship, and what will “Boy” do about the discovery of his first lover’s sexual criminality? Both are unsatisfactorily answered, so, there’s no real climax or resolution, which is ironic given the number of sexual climaxes portrayed in one hour.
I am not sure if this sort of drama is still shocking for audiences. Certainly not for gay audiences. We have been seeing graphic gay hook up scenes since Queer As Folk hit our screens 25 years ago, and portraying a sequence of these alone does not make a gripping story. I would have liked to see a wider portrayal of the gay community than the range of characters here, where the gay men “Boy” meets are predators, sex addicts, chem sex fiends, using each other as pieces of meat with no consideration for their physical or mental well-being, just objects for gratification. I would have welcomed some caring, loving, constructive or hope-giving gay characters or moments in the drama, with models or avenues for how to avoid, cope with or get out of coercive or predatory situations, or how to stop yourself if, like “Boy”, you are saying yes to practically every sexual offer. The drama is produced with the support of Survivors UK (a charity which supports males affected by sexual violence). This is mentioned at the end of the play and suggests the play explores sexual violence and abuse. But the play portrays a willing if naïve young guy entering the promiscuous side of the gay cruising scene who at no point is forced, detained against his will, attacked, refused permission to leave, or coerced etc. He is a willing participant but takes no responsibility for his own choices (how very Millennial). The final conflating of homosexuality with child abuse I find regrettable, not least as it is the false justification for so much prejudice and persecution of gay men worldwide, that gays are paedophiles. We don’t need more dramas reinforcing this false belief, quite the reverse. They are two very different things, even if the author met one example once. Any young gay guys about to enter the sexually active gay world might well consider celibacy given the portrayal of gay men in this drama. Thankfully, us gay guys are mostly much nicer to each other than the characters portrayed here. I’d welcome any re-writes that added balance and humanity to the portrayal of gay men and their promiscuity, and (even hinted at) solutions to problematic sexual choices that could give people alternatives and hope.
