CRUISE (Aria Entertainment/Lambert Jackson Productions/Shoreditch Town Hall/Stream Theatre)*****

 

By Dave

Link: https://www.stream.theatre/season/61 

Available until: Livestreams every day at 7.30pm until Sunday 25^th of April, with matinées at 2.30pm on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Cruise is a sad story but it’s also a story that’s full of love and hope. The play is being streamed live over the next week and then it’s transferring to the Duchess Theatre where it will be played to a live audience. I really hope that, on at least one occasion, the audience will include me.

If you’re a gay man like me, the word ‘cruise’ doesn’t always immediately conjure up an image of a big ship. What it does conjure up isn’t so much what this play is about but it’s fair to say you’re in the right subject area.

The play opens with performer Jack Holden answering the phone for a LGBTQ+ listening service. He’s new to the job and he’s not supposed to be there on his own but the other volunteer hasn’t shown up. But then he gets a call and suddenly he’s drawn into somebody’s life story. This life story happened in the 80s which is a bit before even my time, I was born but if I knew the word ‘gay’, I probably thought it meant happy. There have been a lot of AIDS plays in the last few years and I’m sure there are some people who will jump on the AIDS bandwagon but every play I’ve seen has had something really important to say and they never tell the story with generic gay men. The characters are authentic and individual and they all have their own stories to tell. All these great plays tell you the ways in which being gay makes your life different in ways straight people can probably never fully understand but they also show that in many ways, we’re no different from everyone else. In some ways we're just two more human beings in love.

Jack wrote the play as well as performing it and it’s based on something that really did happen when he was answering the phone for a LGBTQ+ listening service. Most of the callers fall into two categories but not all of them. A lot of the details has been changed but what he has captured is the emotional element that drew him so strongly to the story when he heard it. He’s the only performer and he plays the roles of the other characters, as well as himself. Sometimes he’s sitting at the desk but mostly he’s moving around the building, playing the role of the caller as he acts out their story.

When Cruise is performed onstage, I doubt Jack will be able to go wandering about quite so much. He could go up and down the aisles but most likely, he’ll stay on the stage. But this filmed version doesn’t have to be on the stage and director Bronagh Lagan has taken advantage of that, giving Jack a much bigger location to play with, creating a hybrid of play and film that works really well. Nik Corrall’s designs and Jai Morjana’s lighting combine to turn the parts of the Shoreditch Town Hall into whatever they need to be but there’s nothing distracting about it, the focus stays on Jack and his characters.

I wouldn’t call Cruise a musical but there is music in it, played live by John Elliott. There are a few moments when John is in shot and I thought another person had appeared (after all, when Jack is acting out going to clubs and pubs, it’s not weird to see someone playing the guitar) but it was fine once I’d worked out what was going on. Sometimes Jack sings along (really well) but there’s no sense of providing music at specific intervals. The music is there when it’s right for it to be there.

Jack not only has a very strong emotional connection to this story, he’s also really talented. He has a different voice for each character. They have different accents but it’s not just accent that creates the different personalities. It’s the way they speak, the way they move. He’s also really good at expressing emotions and although it’s mostly an emotional, romantic story, there are hints here and there that he can do comedy too. He can probably do anything. And the way he keeps going through all this really challenging material with his energy levels never dropping is unbelievable.

If you want to improve your LGBTQIA education, Cruise would be a great choice. If you want to watch a great love story, Cruise is a great choice for that too.