A musical about a millennial’s time-travelling queer history lesson? It was never going to be subtle. Max Vernon’s show tells a story we should all know: in 1973, an arson attack on a New Orleans gay bar caused the death of 32 people — America’s deadliest attack on the LGBTQ+ before the 2016 Pulse nightclub shootings.
We begin in 2019 with Wes (always excellent Tyrone Huntley). He has 10 million Instagram followers and he’s just bought an old attic, the significance of which becomes clear only when he finds himself transported back to the Seventies.
There he meets the UpStairs Lounge’s self-made family, among them Buddy (a mustachioed John Partridge), hiding behind a sham marriage, Patrick (beautifully sung by Andy Mientus), a gentle soul who Wes falls for, and Dale (Declan Bennett in a difficult role), a troubled loner who is rejected by the group.
While the songs can be derivative, the writing ties itself in knots by trying to address too much: gay spaces becoming co-opted as they become commodified, today’s LGBTQ+ community’s debt to its ancestors, the tension between progress won and prejudice still to be fought. The final song strikes a note of false empowerment, and one too many clichéd contemporary references make Wes seem shallow. And can we ban “this is triggering” as a cheap joke about how thin-skinned millennials are?
Until August 24 (020 7478 0100; sohotheatre.com)
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