Review – JOHN, DV8

Verbatim dance theatre piece JOHN was inspired by real life interviews with numerous men concerning love and sex. The story revolves around one of these interviewees, John, whose life starts in an abusive home that quickly crumbles around him. Soon into the play John is the only member of his family left after numerous drug overdoses and accidental deaths. His drug habit increases dramatically and he recounts spending five years on the streets collecting scrap metal to sell and stealing to fund his taste of alcohol, cocaine and heroin.

After a stretch in prison that seems to provide John with a few skills, the second half takes the audience through the inner workings of a gay sauna, where the protagonist finds a place to be someone completely new. The managers of the sauna describe their jobs with a bit of humour but move quickly into the nature of consent in a venue where drugs are prevalent and talking is at a minimum. This leads into a scene about HIV which comes off as didactic, seemingly just there to remind us that we should all be wearing protection and not taking GHB for every casual fling. There are some good questions raised about the nature of intimacy and how people justify their actions but these seem pretty ham fisted in their approach, avoiding any interrogation of pleasure in an age of STIs and huge questions regarding stigmatization of sexuality.

The stage is a piece of structural genius that lends itself to a formally exquisite experience. Walls are set in place to make a handful of rooms and narrow corridors that are revealed as the whole stage revolves, revealing whole new locations subtly transformed from home to prison to streets to sauna. The revolving stage continues for whole scenes and is used expertly as actors reel off lines while walking through door after door giving the impression of casual movement as the actor stays centre stage.

The story is impressive simply because of its stark reality and one can’t forget that this is an interview, drilled in again when a voiceover is used (presumably John’s own) instead of the actor, bringing his voice flooding into the work. Yet apart from this the narrative of the play as a whole falls short of bearing witness to an individual struggle because of the simplicity of the arch: man grows up rough, prison gets him off drugs, homosexuality enlivens him again. The path seems too marketable when the nuances are removed and I left wondering whether what kind of audience it was made for and why it seemed to be trying so hard to teach me something that it thought I didn’t know. It might be a beautiful awakening for a homophobe about the possibilities of desire and what going through suffering can do, but it leans on the side of exploitative.

JOHN continues to tour across the world and will return to the UK on the 26th February in Salford