Declan Bennett’s one-man show, Boy Out The City, chronicles his fraught yet cathartic period of isolation during the first year of COVID, interspersed with anecdotes about growing up gay and struggles in his twenties with shame, homophobia and cancer. This synopsis doesn’t sound particularly funny, and it’s a testament to Bennet’s performance that the little over an hour we spend with him is not only moving but also deeply entertaining.
The play, which is co-created and masterfully directed by Nancy Sullivan, premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe, before moving to the Lyric Theatre in the West End for a season last year. Now, it’s finishing up the Spring leg of its tour - including a stop at the Burton Taylor where I caught it - which will then resume in the Autumn.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, Bennet had just turned forty. He escaped the suddenly desolate London with his loving, long-term boyfriend, also an actor, to hole up in an idyllic Oxfordshire cottage. But when his partner was called away to America for several months to film a project, he finds his demons - boredom, depression and gradually, alcoholism - coming-a-calling.
This is a production written by and for its sole performer, and Bennett plays to his strengths throughout. There’s a wry wisdom behind his observations that makes you appreciate that he’s not just starting his career or adult life. As a performer, he’s also endlessly watchable, pacy and effortlessly funny - using physical comedy and a convivial tone as he walks us through the banal details of lockdown life, memorable only for their tedium. He bakes a ridiculous amount of lemon loaf for his neighbour, tries half-heartedly to write and gradually slides into despondency, which leads to a series of flashbacks, taking us through his childhood, teens and twenties and we join him as he tries to make sense of his trauma.
Bennett has lived an interesting life, with a successful acting career and periods in both New York and London and the polished sound and lighting design work to transport us everywhere from glittering nightclubs to empty aisles of HobbyCraft. Despite the polished production design, we never quite escape the sense that he’s telling us this information from the present moment. These recollections never linger long enough to become fully fledged vignettes, and this disappoints me slightly, as Bennett is a talented enough performer to keep our attention across a lengthier, more involved work. Despite the title, a sense of ‘city’ never comes into focus the way the cosiness and then isolation of the cottage does.
The show reminded me profoundly of another one-man play, called Cruise, by writer/performer Jack Holden, which also explores gay city life and contrasts the past and present. Holden’s production was a two-hour tour-de-force, and it’s hard not to feel Boy Out The City slighter by comparison, partly simply because there’s only so much that can be fit into a one-hour show. There was also a discombobulating stylistic choice of having the writing drift in and out of slam poetry style rhyme as emotions ebbed and flowed. I found the writing most lyrical when it settled into a patter of immediacy and soft honesty.
Ultimately, the play gave me the feeling of a long, profound, semi-drunk conversation with a friend, words rush out as feelings surface, many things are touched on, meaningfully, and many emotions are conveyed - but full scenes aren’t conjured. Ultimately, if it left me wanting more, it wasn’t in a bad way. I was moved and gripped throughout, and hope the play’s Autumn tour means a possible chance to expand it even further in the future.