TOXIC

Brighton Fringe 2025 has an impressive number of LGBTQ+ pieces, from comedy to the serious. Surely a reflection of the queer community here in the city but equally a reflection of the fact that here in the UK we have reached a point where homosexuality is normal. I resist using the word accepted, as gay people we do not seek acceptance or tolerance or anything that makes us feel less than ordinary or normal. It’s not the same world over and we should never forget that, nor should we forget that our country, in the hands of a far right authority could swing the other way. We are already seeing threats of that with recent high court rulings that effect our trans community.

Toxic is a play by Manchester writer and theatre maker Nathaniel J Hall. It is a deeply personal work based on his own experiences of coming out as queer and finding after his first sexual experience that he is HIV positive. And at only sixteen!

But the play is only in part about his status, although it is a key element. Toxic is a love story, two queer people who, through online dating apps, meet and fall in love. I use here the word dating but in truth those apps, all too prevalent on the gay scene, are far less about dating in the conventional sense of the word and far more about hooking up for sex. And sex plays a huge part in the relationship that these two queer people form.

They meet, chat, reveal a little about themselves and then they have sex, lots of sex, intense sex and sex that whilst once taboo for queer people, with advances in the treatment of HIV, is now becoming an acceptable part of gay life again.

Gaydar, Grindr and the like have replaced dating, replaced heading out to bars in the hope of meeting a partner, the apps are online cruising and as their relationship grows the apps re-emerge.Their life is seemingly comfortable on one level, but underlying forces are at play, histories that have tarnished their being and gradually destroy what seemed at the start so good.

They meet, they fall in love and then they “fuck it up”. We are told this at the start, that is no spoiler, and as this balanced drama that uses, dance, physical theatre and the occasional breaking of that fourth wall, as it develops we see that whilst the word toxic applies to his HIV status, undetetectable and therefore untransmissable, it also refers to the nature of their doomed relationship. But ultimately it is the toxicity engendered by a world where these apps make sex so very easy.

Nathaniel J Hall plays himself with humbling honesty in his finely scripted play. Josh-Susan Enright is the lover, vibrant and full of passion but carrying their own demons, it is an equally impressive performance.

Scott Le Crass has directed the piece with clarity, nothing is left unsaid and he has instilled the drama with a real energy, vibrant and engaging throughout, so much so that 80 minutes pass by in a flash.

Toxic is a raw and at times unsettling depiction of where things stand for gay men at this time, how freedoms have changed our world, so much for the better but perhaps not all good.

Queer drama often makes me cry, seeing the oppression, the prejudice, the sickness… but this time I came away feeling pride and Nathaniel J Hall and his team should be very proud of this timely and timeless work that is a must see exposé of queer life… and maybe it will help people who see it to not fuck it up!

Dibby Theatre have a website where they provide an excellent range of resources for people to read, whether queer or not. Go to https://www.dibbytheatre.org/toxic to find out more about the issues raised by the play.

Andrew Kay

6 May

The Old Market

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