OPEN
The VAULTS Festival, 23rd Jan - 27th Jan
It’s the opening night of the VAULTS Festival 2019, and I was more than ready to start checking out the impressive list of LGBTQ+ productions being performed as part of this years event, kicking off with OPEN by Christopher Adams and Timothy Allsop. I was lucky enough to catch Adams play Tumulus at last years festival, where it deservedly won the Origins Award for Outstanding New Work, and it is in the same space this year that this piece, which he has co-authored with real-life partner Allsop, is being staged. (It’s also worth noting the play is being produced by LGBTQ+ theatre company Full Disclosure, whose short play nights XPOSED at the Southwark Playhouse I found myself becoming a fan of in 2018).
You would be forgiven for thinking that open relationships are the theme de jour for queer theatre, with the London westend revival of Kevin Elyot’s 1982 play Coming Clean currently still playing at the Trafalgar Studios, and whilst the existence of Elyot’s play somewhat dispels the assumption that navigating an open relationship is something of a modern day phenomena, (albeit with approx 50% of all gay men currently finding themselves in open relationships) it couldn’t be made to feel any more contemporary as a subject than it is in OPEN, not only because the two playwrights are using their own relationship as the source material for this sixty-minute production, but they bravely go one step further in actually playing themselves on stage in this highly entertaining performance that switches between verbatim, storytelling and real-life comedy drama. The staging may be sparse, but the simple props are both imaginative and used to great effect throughout thanks to the assured direction of Will Maynard.
In the opening minutes of the play, with no concern about spoiler alerts, the couple rattle through an extensive list of personal sexual statistics that I suspect, prior to tonight had probably been shared with only their closest friends… if at all! It’s this candour that gives the play It’s raw, honest and very funny edge. (Not to mention the list being fairly impressive, having jointly notched up over one hundred lovers between them, a large majority of which seems to have taken place after the couple were civilly partnered in 2010). Having got a clear indication of where we are going, this play quickly becomes all about the journey… their journey, which presents as many positive stories about the perks of an open relationship as it does about the pitfalls, as the couple offer a full and frank dissection focussed as much on their love for each other as about the feelings of jealousy, desire and lust brought about by their decision to have an open relationship. It’s a very different journey for both, Timothy being the first man that Christopher had ever kissed prior to the arrangement, and Timothy himself discovering aspects of his own sexuality that had remained dormant throughout the relationship. If the couple are holding anything back in the telling of their story, it’s hard to imagine what that might be!
It’s not that their sex life was suffering prior to opening up their relationship, far from it by all accounts, and having a list of all the different places they ‘got it on’ read out by a member of the audience was a comedic highlight of the evening in the response it received on stage from Adams and Allsop. On the whole though, getting various members of the audience to periodically read a short piece of script is a devise that felt repeated a few too many times, serving only to detract from this being the performers own story, and having built the show around that premise it remains unclear why they would then give their voices to someone else. (Don’t panic though, this audience participation is simple and done in good humour). With such good use of pre-recorded cues throughout the rest of the play, I wondered if a few more to replace the audiences voices might have better served the unfolding story being kept uniquely theirs.
Had thIs production not been performed by the playwrights themselves there is no doubt this would still have been a fresh and engaging take on an old theme, but there is no denying the extra resonance brought about by the couple themselves telling this story and this is further enhanced when, near the end of the play a small collage of photographs is brought onto the stage. Unfortunately, despite this being a fairly intimate venue, the individual pictures were difficult to make out but I, along with a few other interested members of the audience, went to take a closer look at these pictures after the show, (and I suggest you do the same). With such personal assets like this pictorial history of their nine year relationship, it felt somehow wasted to have played such a small part in the evening, and to perhaps have seen a few of these images possibly projected periodically throughout the show might have added yet another layer of intimacy, although given the subject matter of the evening, it’s hard to imagine how that could even be possible.
Whether an open relationship is your thing or not, there is as much for the audience to think about as there is to be entertained by, and Adams and Allsop are in no way preaching their position, the hurdles they have encountered being given as much time as the highs. “It has encouraged us to explore how we might change the institution of marriage from a gay and queer perspective” say Adams and Allsop, and this is a fantastic vehicle to get that conversation started!
★★★★
Photos: Matthew Carnazza