Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a pigeon? No, it’s the superhero Stallion, in a tatty homemade mask that is far from equine. As Horse-Play begins, he is imprisoned in a subterranean lair by Villainor, having been lured there by the kidnapping of Butterfly, his trusty sidekick. “He’s very good, isn’t he?” notes Butterfly from the torture table when Villainor pops out. “He ought to be, the amount I’m paying him,” snorts Stallion.
This is actually Tim (David Ames) and Tom (Jake Maskall), a married couple spicing up their sex life with cosplay. But when an accident leaves them trapped in the dungeon with Villainor, AKA Karl (Matt Lapinskas), the stage is set for some homo-truths to be confronted.
What emerges is positively decorous. Tom, it transpires, has a penchant for string vests; Tim once blabbed about his husband’s piles. In a show with not much to say, it’s a shame the gags don’t take the roof off. There’s a vaguely naughty Downton Abbey line but comedy of a pricklier stripe might have been found by exploring Tom’s subservience to his younger, prettier partner, whose needs dominate their marriage, or the flash of socio-economic privilege when Tim snaps at Karl: “We bought you!” Instead, Tim apologises. No harm done.
That’s the problem: nothing of any consequence occurs. A rummage through Villainor’s accoutrements (adult diapers, flavoured lube) is as amusing as a supermarket stocktake. Pluses include Lapinskas, who gets funnier the more his former dominance crumbles, and Stephanie Siadatan, injecting vitality as a kind of deus sex machina.
While it’s no bad thing for Horse-Play to occupy a lighter register than Tom Wright’s superb Very Special Guest Star, which also showed a gay couple seeking sexual rejuvenation, Ian Hallard’s script never gets around to manufacturing tension, comic or otherwise. Tim and Tom bicker sweetly at the start of the show, and they’re still doing it by the end. This could be a sly comment on calcified marriages but as material it’s close to moribund, even if the effervescence of Andrew Beckett’s direction saves it from being outright torture.
At Riverside Studios, London, until 24 September.
