Christopher Shinn’s fierce, polemical play was inspired by the 2010 case of Tyler Clementi, a US college student who killed himself after his roommate used a webcam to spy on Clementi’s private encounter with another man. But while Shinn’s play has a passionate sincerity and demolishes the myth that we live in a cosy new world of sexual tolerance, it can’t help feeling a bit cloistered in its preoccupation with the politics of persecution.
Shinn’s setting is the campus of a large state university, where all his characters represent a facet of the big issue. The eponymous hero is a geeky loner (very well played by Ryan McParland) who is also an active player in exhibitionistic websites. Gabe, president of the “queer student group”, is too busy pursuing his own political career to take much interest in the suicidal Teddy. Meanwhile, Drew, Gabe’s lover, is a campaigning journalist more concerned to portray Teddy as a martyr than as a complex individual. To add to the representative mix, Shinn also gives us a closeted straight guy, transgender and disabled students and a college president who boasts of progress while hiding behind booming platitudes.
Shinn paints a comprehensive picture of a world in which homophobic bullying leads to depression and even death, but where no one starts to address the real causes. But, while Shinn’s play has a lot to tell us, it seems too palpably issue-driven and never allows its characters the freedom to discuss anything much beyond campus politics.
It is directed with great flair by Dominic Cooke, and Luke Newberry as the careerist Gabe, Oliver Johnstone as his control-freak lover and Matthew Marsh as the unbelievably tactless college president all give highly assured performances. I came out feeling my attention had been drawn to a host of important topics rather than having had my emotions fully engaged.
- At Donmar Warehouse, London, until 5 December. Box office: 0844 871 7624
