Ben Fensome’s Buff explores a unique perspective on LGBTQ+ life at VAULT Festival
“Apollo’s belt? More like Apollo’s muffin top”
On the one hand, there’s one thing gratifying concerning the variety of homosexual performs round today, significantly right here in London. On the opposite, there’s one thing miserable concerning the variety of them that depend on toned, shirtless torsos for his or her advertising and marketing imagery. Recognising this, author Ben Fensome, director/dramaturge Scott Le Crass and performer David O’Reilly provide up Buff as a welcome corrective.
At the guts of this play is a homosexual major college trainer in his early thirties, who’s reeling from the collapse of a 6-year relationship and who occurs to be plus-sized. Needing to get a brand new flatmate and desirous to re-enter the world of relationship, there’s a impolite awakening ready for him which precipitates an emotional maelstrom from which it isn’t instantly clear he’s going to flee from.
Fensome’s writing is acutely effectively noticed. In a world so pushed by outward appearances, fatphobia ought to come as little shock however the multitudinous methods during which it may hit are painstakingly evoked. Particularly brutal are the vary of responses that he will get while making an attempt to hook up and generally even after hooking up; issues aren’t helped by his new roomie being a buff Instagram mannequin who he can’t assist however crush on.
The cumulative, deleterious impact of all this ends in an explosive breakdown that leaves no-one unscathed – associates, household, even pupils – and O’Reilly delivers it with a punishing, self-lacerating honesty. Part of the fantastic thing about the writing is that as he’s not portrayed merely as a sufferer of societal pressures, he’s spikily complicated in all his interactions and so it clear he has his personal emotional progress to do as effectively. Not a simple watch however a powerfully compelling one nonetheless.