Wet Feet
Stage Door Theatre • 18th June - 29th June
It seems that plays set in gay saunas are like buses. You wait a surprisingly long time for one to come along, only to have a second appear in quick succession. So it is that hot on the heels of Sauna Boy (see previous review), comes Wet Feet at the Union Theatre, a very different offering written by Michael Neri, who also stars in this two-hander alongside Matthew Edgar. It tells the story of a chance encounter between Nathan (Edgar), a 25 year old out and proud gay man, and Franko (Neri), a 34 year old dealing with a number of complex issues that he is slowly trying to overcome, the ongoing repression of his sexuality being just one of them, but when Nathan finds Franko taking refuge in his privately hired ‘cruise room’, (who knew such things existed… my sauna education clearly has some way to go), an unlikely connection between the two is made. “Most people don’t come here to talk”, Nathan informs Franko as if delivering a sauna 101… but they do talk, and connect enough to arrange a second encounter and, as the months pass so we are brought back to the now jointly booked cruise room to witness both Nathan and Franko slowly start to recognise the possibility of finding a connection they neither knew they were looking for, or could have even have dreamed possible in their surroundings. However, it’s no easy task given Franko is also borderline OCD with his compulsive cleanliness and relentless requirement for high levels of sanitisation. (Just how he even managed to find himself inside a sauna in the first place remains a mystery, given the potential he see’s for germs to lurk on every surface… including Nathan!)
Neri successfully manages to engage the audience by quickly establishing a classic ‘odd-couple’ scenario between his two protagonists, a recognisable trope that has been used since the likes of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple in the sixties, and one that still holds good to the present day, as demonstrated with great success in 2023’s award winning film The Holdovers. It’s a formula that works just as well here as Neri proves he is equally capable of mining this central conceit for comedic effect. It’s a tricky balance given some of the subject matter he weaves into the story, but it’s one he manages well. “So you’ve never been cruising before?”, a sexually confident Nathan enquires. “Once… with Royal Caribbean”, replies the infinitely less worldly-wise and socially awkward Franko, who remains uncomfortably over-dressed for his surroundings in comparison to his scantily clad acquaintance. With a litany of sharp one-liners and two actors that feel perfectly cast in their respective roles, Wet Feet gets off to a highly enjoyable start, aided by an uncomplicated but effective set from Reuben Speed and Massimo Neri’s atmospheric lighting design, both combing to give the audience a good sense of the location around which Dominic Rouse neatly directs the unfolding friendship.
As the play progresses, so Nathan and Franko’s meetings become more regular, and the characters begin to open-up to each other beyond the awkward pleasantries of their first meeting. Nathan tries to help Franko overcome his more debilitating ticks, whilst Franko offers Nathan someone around who he can begin to let his own guard down. These shifts in character are well measured by Neri for the most part and result in an audience routing for Nathan and Franko to find a way through their differences and become the couple they have every potential of being. Unfortunately the writing becomes a little less sharp as the play progresses’, and where it had opened with all the wit and charm of the afore mentioned Neil Simon, relying on the well-drawn characters to drive the comedy, Neri finds himself shifting his style into a more observational comedic space, a stock-in-trade with the likes Micheal Macintyre and Peter Kaye, (there was even a joke about a misheard lyric, in true Peter Kaye fashion), with the humour becoming more reliant on the audiences shared recognition of the characters past reminiscences rather than being generated by the developing characters themselves. As such, forays into the lived queer experience of so many, such as the legacy of section 28, homophobic encounters and early sexual awakenings feel more like lifted entries from the playwright’s own diary, especially during a rather laboured riff on catching the free previews of Gay TV during the early days of SKY. Such references, whilst undeniably relatable, are all brought out in an almost ‘shopping list’ style that had very little new to say beyond the countless times such topics have been addressed, to better effect, in numerous other plays.
That being said, Wet Feet definitely succeeds in terms of the characters Michael Neri has created at the heart of his play, even if his own confidence in their story being enough to hold the audience appears to wane from time to time. They are where the gold is and both Matthew Edgar and Neri himself remain highly watchable in their respective parts, effortlessly generating an engaging ‘odd couple’ chemistry together that’s a joy to watch, and as such they are two actors and a playwright we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on.
★★★
review: Simon J. Webb
photographs: Matthew Coulton