Photo by Holly Revell
Theatre maker Alexis Gregory takes us by the hand and joyfully and intelligently leads us by way of Donna Summer to a 2070s gay utopia, that may not be as idyllic as it sounds.
FutureQueer is a heady cocktail of stand-up, Ted talk and monologue that finds the future in our past – specifically Summer’s big gay anthem I Feel Love.
He takes us back 47 years to its futuristically feeling creation and forward 47 years from now to what the world might become.
The show opens with an offstage voice announcing that the whole world has turned queer – instantly via what he cleverly calls a Padamic – but if some of us feel non-gay there is a safe space behind the Soho alleyway wheelie bins where we can meet.
It’s a great fun start to 70 mins of rollercoaster information, futuristic adverts, well-researched material, and Alexis delivers it with style, speed and confidence.
This is issues-led entertainment and we take in as much as we want and I certainly chewed on it for a few days afterwards.
Gregory wants us to consider what AI will lead to – and it’s not Artificial Intelligence in this case but Alternative Intelligence.
Suddenly he’s being a queer avatar – our very own queer avatar, whom we never physically meet but who can bring us pleasure, however vicarious.
Then it’s on to another gem of a thought – queer embryos created to be given to queer mentors/parents, in a world where we will live on the sea, or beneath it. It’s a world of migrants, and as Alexis says, queers have always been migrants both physically and emotionally – outsiders, mistrusted, treated differently.
He loves to quote futurists like Arthur C Clarke, Alan Turing and others, and show how their predictions more or less came true. From that he projects forwards and it’s a sometimes scary world he wants us to visit.
And he looks at current book bans round the world, the treatment of trans communities and finds reflections of our past that are not welcoming.
So it’s a show as much about dystopia as utopia – but I’ll stick with Donna in the school of optimism. I’m sure Alexis will refine, edit, expand the material here which has only had a few try-outs on stage. There’s a move to bring the show to Brighton – maybe for Fringe 2025 – that would be some gig.
FutureQueer was at the Crazy Coqs, London for one night only.
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