Boyography – Social Refuge, Manchester

The marketing and pre-show announcements for Boyography promise a unique story about queer love and fluid sexuality in a “post-gay world”. The reality is a lot more commonplace.

It starts promisingly. When two boys bump into each other in a school corridor something unspoken and powerful is sparked. The locker room encounter between Oliver (Isaac Radmore) and Jake (George Bellamy) feels inevitable, but Oliver’s reaction is a lot more surprising.

Experience would tell an audience that the cocksure and laddish one in a relationship like this would be closeted and outwardly homophobic. Far from it. Oliver has a girlfriend, but he also happily sleeps with boys. It is just sex. After all, “bodies are bodies”.

Sadly, the intensely modern idea of young men without doubt who reject labels and engineer their own sexualities is soon forgotten. What follows is a fairly predictable melodrama, albeit one with moments of refreshingly explicit openness.

It isn’t without its charms. Writer and director Nick Maynard has staged this neatly and nicely. Simple watercolour-style illustrations projected onto a back screen give us a great sense of place. This is aided by a realistic soundscape which transports the audience from school yards to parks.

The two actors are well cast and do their best with some fairly stilted dialogue that sits unrealistically in their young mouths. It is difficult to believe many teenagers would use the phrase “circling like a pack of dogs”. There are lots of similar examples.

Radmore, however, really shines. Their performance seethes with an anger and emotion that is incredibly watchable.

Intimacy coordinator Leni Murphy has done their best to choreograph moments that accurately portray both animal urgency and more tender physical experiences. Unfortunately, in a room the size of the downstairs space at Social Refuge, there is nowhere to hide. The kisses do not feel convincing enough.

Discussion of washing powder suggests the final scene is many years on from the teen angst which makes up the bulk of the story. However, this is far from obvious, and the audience could probably have benefitted from some clearer signals, perhaps in costume changes.

There are some interesting thoughts in Boyography. A show that truly addresses current sexual fluidity or the Peter Pan problem, that modern life is preventing boys from becoming men, would be welcome. 

However, these conversations are not well sustained and never feel believable when voiced by these particular characters.

The pre-show on-stage imagery includes shots from former gay dramas, including Beautiful Thing. This is the real problem. We have seen this story before.

There is a growing canon now of stage and screen stories focused on young LGBTQ+ relationships, many featuring white cisgender gay men. New stories in the same mould could do with having something new to say. That isn’t the case here. 

Playing until 26^th July 2024. Tickets and more information can be found here: https://greatermanchesterfringe.co.uk/events/boyography/

Reviewer: Peter Ruddick

Reviewed: 2nd July 2024

North West End UK Rating: