Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Andrew Doherty – Sad Gay AIDS Play.
Andrew Doherty
Genre: Comedy
Venue: Pleasance Dome
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
A wickedly funny satire that takes all the tropes of an AIDS play in an attempt to get funding from Arts Council England, who have strict rules for tragedy.
Review
I unfortunately missed Doherty’s previous Fringe hit, Gay Witch Sex Cult, but was aware of his style and popularity. In this wonderfully riotous and sharp show, he seeks funding from Arts Council England to write his next show, The Real Housewives of Wife House. Sadly, they are not interested in that, but will fund a tragic play that breaks new tragic ground. So, Doherty has a crack at an AIDS play, based on minimal research, and tries to get approved by ACE. His targets are hit superbly, the structured tropes of tragedy that must be obeyed, and anyone who has ever filled in an application to the Arts Council will recognise how seriously proscribed the criteria is.
Doherty is a skilled comedian, working the audience into paroxysms of laughter with his asides and looks, while knowingly conveying to us that he knows how silly it is. My PhD is on AIDS Theatre and Queer Theory, and it was a joy to see him take some of the well-worn cliches and send them up, with Arts Council England insisting he has to be balanced, and not be “triggering”. So we have the formidable and distant mother, the sexual freedom and unprotected sex, waiting for diagnosis, and, of course, (as there was in early AIDS drama), a lot of death- and angels! Arts Council England are watching this presentation of scenes from the new play, and they interrupt and are only interested in tragedy, as defined by them. Doherty asks them what they want, and he can’t sign another contract, he has no blood left. That’s when the ACE voice becomes, shall we say, more demonic!
The strength of the piece is not just in its biting satire, it’s also in its structure, each scene from the play topping expectations from the previous one. In a huge swipe at stereotypes, Doherty presents a Northen scene, wickedly funny, sending up every aspect of an abused lad, his drunken father and kestrels! But what really makes this outstanding is Doherty’s timing, the little looks to the audience, the asides, the double take, each delivered effortlessly. He makes it look easy, but it is actually difficult to achieve, and he got it right every time at the performance I attended. I think we are witnessing a real, original, and genuine comedy talent here, see him before he gets moulded into something more mainstream!
