It’s not often that you get a guarantee that you will get your money back if you don’t laugh in a show, as John Pickering of the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival promised us, when he introduced The Gaydar Diaries to a full house on the opening night of the festival last night.The show premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006, and is now at the charming little New Theatre, at the back of the Connolly Bookshop in East Essex Street, beside the Project, for one week only. It is the brainchild of London-based Dutchman Menno Kuijper, who wrote it along with the five other members of the cast, and the show has a distinctly English feel to it, with distinct echoes of Little Britain and the League of Gentlemen.
This is light entertainment, burlesque, slapstick; energetically and slickly performed. It’s a sketch show, and as such the reflection it offers us on the phenomenon of gaydar, how it has fundamentally changed the way gay men relate and have sex with each other, is more like that given off by a disco glitter ball than anything clearer or more accurate. It does convey the ridiculousness of what we men can get up to online, and practically every fetish I’ve come across (ahem) was touched on. Some of the sketches were a bit laboured, however, and, for all the evident talent in the cast, they lacked a certain bite in the writing. The romantic characters, those who yearned for something more substantial, tended to be portrayed as feather-boa-clad sentimental fools, misfits in the world of gaydar. One affecting monologue stood out, a man who had just logged off for good, and was determined to be “a person, not a profile”. The simplicity and honesty of those words was then drowned out by more sex slapstick, more barechested lads with gorgeous pecs, and the the argument was lost. As it is in “real” online life.
But, did I laugh? Oh yes. Everyone in the audience did, I am sure. It is for this reason that I think this show is a must-see for gay men – we need to laugh at ourselves, and I think there is a real need for us to get a perspective on what we do online. Reflective thinking is really hard to do when our dicks are in control. The conversation my group had afterwards in the bar was, I hope, not the only one of its kind sparked by the show – reminiscences of various online and offline sexual encounters, the absurdity of them, the loneliness of them, the fun of them, the splendid futility of them.
A sketch show is too light a vehicle to carry the weight of the deeper, more troubling aspects of online networking – the social isolation, the lack of authenticity, the game-playing; the troubling issues of barebacking and HIV, the age of consent and the protection of vulnerable children. At times, it felt like a mareketing vehicle for gaydar, and perhaps it is, for they have contributed to the show. And yet, there isn’t a better way to get you thinking and talking about all these things than by wrenching yourself away from your keyboard and going to a show like this and having a good laugh. Like gaydar and the men you meet through it, it’s all just a bit of harmless fun.
Isn’t it?
Venue: THE NEW THEATRE
Dates:- MON. 7th – SAT. 12th MAY
Time: 9.30pm
Tickets: €14 (Conc. €12)
Sat. Matinee @ 3pm €10