Brighton Year-Round 2026

Learning How to Dive

Damn Cheek Productions

Genre: Contemporary, Costume, Drama, Fringe Theatre, LGBTQ+ Theatre, New Writing, Queer Theatre, Theatre

Venue: Lantern Theatre Studio, Brighton

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

Matt knocks on the door of a man, Terry, he’s never met to give hm an orange bag he’s only just learned about; let alone its contents. It contains a letter from Martin, the man’s lover: Matt’s father. Brendan Murray’s Learning How to Dive plays two performances at the Lantern Theatre Brighton, directed by Willie Elliott of Damn Cheek Productions till October 25.

This is a supremely naturalistic two hours, announced with what seem to be wrong-way act titles: Act One: “One Week Later” and Act Two: “After the Funeral”; which initially seems like a spoiler. But with the ashes already shared as the play opens, there’s little danger of that. Terry (writer/actor Brendan Murray) muses over his great love Martin in the shadowy arc of a monologue. One quietly riven with inner grief and wonder; today September 5 being their 35^th anniversary. That initial date arrived on holiday when Martin was already married with two sons: the eldest, Matt, then being nine.  Murray, in the Damn Cheek tradition acts with a superbly naturalistic distraction. Playing Matt, Darren Cheek – Damn Cheek’s co-artistic founder/director – simmers and is as understated. Till he isn’t.

You’ll not miss this naturalism either. It’s intimate in-the-round, such as you might see at the Orange Tree. Use of the Lantern Studio space is elegantly wrought and works perfectly. Clothes are almost invisibly plain, apart from one telling leather jacket. A cluttered table with documents, papers and to the side, some whisky and a couple of chairs is all that’s needed. There’s deft lighting, and this with appropriate cues of Chet Baker in singing (rather than sax) mode, are handled by Patric Kearns of cueFanfare (you might have seen their excellent Noises Off at BOAT in July).

Coming to terms with the fact that your wonderfully ‘regular’ father was gay, and had a secret lover for most of your life, is something increasingly discussed, though ever-present. One day such revelations – with all their painful incomprehension – might become a thing of the past; so long as we keep talking and stave off fear, homophobia and wrong expectations. This is a play about the times when it wasn’t possible. When such adult revelations about sexuality were wrenched out of people. Did I add it’s quietly very funny on occasions too?

The play’s set near Manchester. Murray’s Terry in a northern burr gently lifts and sifts a life, like ashes through his fingers. He’s interrupted by Matt, and the slow dance-off of feeling and stand-off begins. Cheek reveals the right amount of muffled, baffled blokiness: a ‘regular’ married man with children himself, he’s clearly out of his emotional depth. Just as his father taught him, he’ll have to dive deep to navigate the shelving world he finds himself in. Cheek conveys a shuffling awkwardness: someone not quite hostile, but  unhappy, perhaps feeling usurped by another man; and protective too of his mother Jill; as well as offstage younger brother Chris, who seems hyper-efficient yet vulnerable.

The accommodation both reach with each other is enormously affecting, barely rising above a whisper. There’s stand-offs certainly, when Matt bristles, but tenderness too, as Terry proves after a small stroke physically vulnerable. Mat twice goes to help, and has to hold him. Shifts of information, disclosure, vulnerability and pain move like tectonic plates between them. This is exquisite acting.

The last moments of Act One are chronologically the last of the play, as we shift in Act Two – already anticipating what must come –  to Matt clearing away the funeral banquet for his mother Jill (Karen Spicer). Was there enough food? she asks as Matt assures her the amount left over, not to mention wine, would furnish a restaurant. He’s apportioning everything for friends; but Jill’s offstage BFF Maureen’s not getting more bottles. Each stroke is established. What would Jill want with bottles when she only has single glasses?

These first ten or so minutes in the shorter 40-minute act are indeed the only dialogue we get. Somewhere nearby, Maureen forever chomps sandwiches or anything else she can lay hands on. Perhaps she’s been jealous of Jill’s luck all these years with handsome Martin. Again Murray gradates an arc of forty years of Jill’s somehow feeling inadequate: something has fundamentally eaten this. It’s not cruel but leaves its marks; and is universal. Spicer masterfully navigates these small puffs of fear, as Cheek’s Matt tries affirming her.

Matt’s attempts to resolve Jill’s inadequacies (Maureen complained of the sausage rolls) soon establish Jill’s abjection. Lft alone though Jill\s musings are taken as a particularly quiet slice of Alan Bennett. More mobile though and moving towards discovery as she examines a suitcase. Jill hymns her own failure, the drop in sexual relations.

With slight angles of her head, with a movement towards something Jill’s impelled to like a Pandora’s box, Spicer introduces a shiver of wat should be terrible. But Jill’s long-anticipated another lover. They’re not just what she expects. Even then, Spicer conveys Jill’s infinite, gentle acquiescence: the regret of the unspoken. Indeed her whole monologue is the talk she wished to have with martin, and can only finally release it now. It’s infinitely sad, yet brings a first closure and a kind of loving. Again the delicacy of understatement here would grace any national stage.

There is an ache of absence: some meeting between Terry and Jill. The revealing Q&A revealed earlier versions: a longer Second act – well-pruned in this iteration, and other options perhaps to be tried in next year’s tours. Of those discussed, we get the finest here. And yet, one wonders what an even later moment, perhaps introduced first might bring. If that seems impertinent, when witnessing such a consummate production, let alone acting, it all goes to prove these characters have more than enough truth to make us wonder what life, not Murray and his colleagues, will do with them.

It’s clear the Damn Cheek ethos, deeply collaborative, works effortlessly here. This is a near-perfect gem. It will soon be an outstanding production. Notwithstanding Damn Cheek’s touring to smaller venues, this play does deserve maximum exposure, production values and being seen in a slightly larger space. A hidden gem that demands to be seen when it returns.

Thanks are due to the support of Tony Earnshaw, Oddfellows Hall, The Brigitte Trust, Estelle Earnshaw, |Melissa Barrett, Porl Smith, Susan Quilliam, Hoddeson Peace Cottage, The Lantern Theatre, Erin Burbridge, Claudia Cartwright, Susan smith, Mole Valley Arts Alive Festival and Mole Valley District Council.

Published October 26, 2026October 26, 2026 by Simon Jenner