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Theatre Review Juggling the ever-present sense of stigma, threat and fear

Undetectable
King’s Head Theatre,

AN intense interrogation of relationships, sex and intimacy, Undetectable is quite the play to see on Valentine’s Day.

Tom Wright’s vibrant work returns to the King’s Head Theatre following a highly successful run last year. Freddie Hogan (Lex) and Lewis Brown (Bradley) reprise their roles and the excellent Rikki Beadle-Blair is back at the helm.

Personal trainer Lex and primary school teacher Bradley have been dating for three months. Lex has just introduced Bradley to his mates and now they’re back at Lex’s house, possibly about to have sex for the first time.

Wright’s lively script covers a lot — sex, intimacy, drugs, HIV, prep, community, queer politics. To begin with it feels a bit overwhelming. But as the play continues, we come to realise that this is just what it’s like to be a queer man in the present — to juggle the ever-present sense of stigma, threat and fear. Or as Bradley succinctly puts it: “It’s never just sex. Not for us.”
Undetectable asks us to consider how one builds a relationship in that milieu.

Beadle-Blair, directing and designing, keeps the pace up but beautifully allows the jokes and flirtatious banter to slip into more serious, reflective passages. In particular, the sequences in which Lex and Bradley relate haunting moments from their pasts to each other are brilliant.

Both Hogan and Brown’s performances shine in these moments, each poignantly manifesting Bradley and Lex’s pain, regret and shame.

The intimacy of the Kings Head auditorium helps proceedings. The audience surrounds the action on three sides and Beadle-Blair’s raised bed set intimately involves the audience in Undetectable’s action and ideas.

Runs until 7 March, box office: kingsheadtheatre.com

Katherine M Graham 

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