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REVIEW: Away from Home

May 25, 2014

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Away from Home

Marlborough Theatre, Princes Street, Brighton

Friday, May 22

Kyle is comfortable with his life as a male escort until he is hired by a premiership footballer, making him question his values, relationships and the whole direction of his life.

An edgy, subversive award-winning one-man show – laced with sharp humour. With not one openly gay footballer in the UK professional game, Away From Home goes in for a hard tackle on footballs last taboo in a cool, direct in your face way. This is a hard edged exploration of respect, heroes, honesty and what happens when one man’s world’s, which have been kept very carefully apart slowly start to collide with a mounting velocity and rip everything apart.

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Rob Ward gives us a quick flash of his butt then flies straight into character on stage, he’s answering back, explaining, pleading, lying, twisting, being so economical with the truth that he’s cutting it out from underneath him, then bam! A punter turns up who’s also a premier footballer.  It’s one fine balancing act too far and suddenly his life starts to unwind while taking on what appears to be a real upwards momentum.  Ward takes us through the funny first time with his famous football trick with great humour, and he kept the audience laughing a lot with his savage asides and inter rivalry comments about footballers and their chants. He kept the audience hanging on every word and also interested, not always an easy balance for a one man show to achieve.

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The plot takes a lot in, life, lies, being an ordinary lad who just happens to be bent and be a huge football fan, being northern, sex work, family expectations, being out, being closeted, death, the fleeting chance of love . I got a bit tired of the huge family events after a while, car crash, cancer, exposure, etc but that might just be me and my aversion to clichés in life, but they do happen (as my companions pointed out), I just wonder if they all happen quite so fast and so often, but this is drama after all, and a narrative must have motion and this is one thing that writers Rob Ward and Martin Jameson have most certainly nailed, foot to the floor, bang!

See more info on the play here on their website

There was terrific passion and tension on stage. Ward does cornered and edgy cocky young queer very well, he also does camp older pimp with a certain alacrity too, which made me laugh. It might be a game of two halfs but this is play of one man and one winning team. 

Its subject matter is as fresh as it’s production and Wards passionate and convincing acting is the thing that carries this piece of writing to it’s tender and honest conclusion. I like a play that surprises me, and Away from Home did that.

Contains partial nudity, coarse language and explicit content.

We were impressed, book now!

Runs until Monday 26

 

 

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