Cruise The Play - Folklore From A Lost Gay Soho
Jack Holden's one man masterpiece takes us back to a time of joy and hedonism that was torn apart by the tragedy of AIDS.
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There is a play opening in Manchester this week that is very modern in look and feel but has ancient and traditional roots. Cruise, written and performed by the extraordinary Jack Holden, keeps alive stories about people that have almost been forgotten. These are people who lived in a time not so long ago in a location that has long been cleaned up, wrapped up and taken upmarket.
Cruise takes the story of one man to tell the story of a village which turns out to be a story about all of us. This is the best type of folklore with a protagonist’s journey that might not look like ours but with an emotional arc that we all recognise. Yes, the play has a hip scaffold set and the incredible DJ and sound artist John Patrick Elliott on stage adding to Jack Holden’s dramatic skill and kinetic energy but it also has very traditional first person storytelling. Jack Holden becomes the 21st Century version of a bearded man in long robes, standing on a log in a clearing in the Forest animating stories of the ancestors.
The story we hear in Cruise is about a character’s quest. The character is Michael who, in 1984, was diagnosed with HIV and told his life expectancy was four years. Michael and his partner, Dave, decide that if their time is limited they will live what they have left to the maximum. They sell their house and car and dedicate themselves to a life of hedonistic excess. Dave passes away after two years and Michael is left with live through his remaining time alone. When he gets to what should be his last day of life he decides to go out in Soho on the biggest night ever. But he doesn’t die and very year on the same date he marks the anniversary.
Michael’s story unfolds to us during a phone call to Switchboard, a telephone support service originally set up in 1974 as the London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard which became a literal lifeline for many in the 80s. Holden really was a volunteer on today’s Switchboard and Cruise is based on a call he took. For the play the caller becomes ‘Michael’ and Holden takes on this character to tell the story which takes us on a ride into the world of an almost forgotten 1980s Soho. It is an exhilarating, emotional and evocative ride that will be informative for some and for others a vivid reminder.
As Vyasa says at the beginning of the Mahabharata "If you listen carefully, at the end you'll be someone else."
I saw the play during its London run in 2021 at The Duchess Theatre and was transported back to the time when Soho really was seedy and dirty. There were peep shows and sex shops, adverts for sex workers were out in the open but gay bars had blacked out windows to further hide a hidden community. When I was 14 I was propositioned by a female sex worker in Walker’s Court. This is a smelly, little alleyway that was filled with brightly lit sex shops and runs from the Berwick Street fruit market up the side of the Raymond Revue bar and the legendary Madame Jojos. There is still a sex shop there now. It looks like a throw back to the 80s with a bright red and blue neon sign advertising ‘Fetish, Femdom, Bondage, Spanking, Hetero & Gay, Les & Trans, IN STOCK’ . And the alley still smells of the same acrid piss it did in 1983.
Most of the other sex shops have gone now, replaced big bold, branded vendors of pleasure. The peep shows, and the topless bars have vanished and the hidden gay community is now out and proud. These are all positives but, as a result of this cleaning up, we also lost a subculture made up of a close knit group of friends who could only be open with each other. Being gay back then was something that many learnt to hide at all costs.
Through Micheal’s story we learn about how gay culture defined and structured itself in the early 80s. How there was a constant danger of being outed which could lead to losing your job, or becoming a victim of violent ‘gay bashing’. Michael tells how some men got addicted to the thrills and danger of cottaging - seeking anonymous sex in public toilets and risking arrest in Met Police honey pot stings.
We learn about polari, which was a codified dialect spoken in the gay community, made up of Italianate phrases, rhyming slang and other random words. It started as a way of avoiding arrest and eventually became more theatrical and hilarious. ‘He’ became ‘she’, ‘look’ became ‘ vada’ and ‘Good to see you’ became 'Bona to vada your dolly old eek!’ Nobody really speaks it any more since we all became a bit Hunsnet but Cruise helps to keep it alive and when you watch the show do not be surprised to see gentlemen of a certain age becoming misty eyed when it is used.
Cruise is a wonderful play that also examines the nature of theatre. Is it just a sequinned and feathered fantasy to take us away from the squalor of the real world or is it a way of protecting and honouring stories, people and times that might otherwise be swept away and built over without so much as a blue plaque to remind us of their existence? Cruise actually does both it takes us away to a place that makes us remember.
Above all, though, Cruise is about people and about love. It is about the people, some are here and some are missing, who have become myths. Holden allows us to both laugh and fall in love with these wonderful characters. Through them we are able to understand bigger truths; It is important to celebrate those who made what we have possible but also that no matter who you sleep with Love is universal.
Cruise The Play is at HOME Manchester until 12th August 2023
Click here for details Cruise The Play
To contact Switchboard (UK only) call 0800 0119 100 (Free call)
Email hello@switchboard.lgbt
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