Writer: Gavin Fleming
Director: Max Mackay
Of all the events in 2022, the Queue was both the most absurd and the most moving. The main line of people waiting to file past Queen Elizabeth’s coffin as it laid in state at Westminster Hall stretched along the Thames, with waiting times of anything from 12 to 24 hours.
Gavin Fleming’s new comedy The Q concentrates on an odd couple of queuers: Mansel David’s former female impersonator Barry (who used to perform with Danny La Rue, including in front of the Queen at the Royal Variety Performance) and his oncologist and neighbour, Ruth (Maddy Maguire).
Ruth and Barry’s spikily antagonistic relationship is enlivened by the pair’s ebullient performances, even when Fleming’s script drifts into what feels like first draft, placeholder dialogue. Whenever the writing perks up to match the couple’s charm, the play shifts up several gears.
Ruth’s own story – trapped in a relationship in which only her boyfriend seems invested, and suspended from work for having sex with a patient – adds layers to the pair’s relationship, especially when their neighbours in the queue turn out to be that same patient (Billy Gurney’s Walter) and his annoyingly upbeat wife Lilian (Ellana Gilbert).
While Lilian’s one-dimensional perkiness grates, and not always for the reasons intended, the reveal of pathos beneath is unsurprising but effective, Gilbert showing capabilities beyond the stereotype her character mostly inhabits.
David also impresses as Barry, combining a bristling antipathy towards modern drag with a pride in his former career and a pining for his late partner. Less impressive is his costume as his alter ego. While it is always risky to manifest a Royal Variety Performance-worthy costume on a fringe theatre microbudget, David’s effectiveness at portraying Barry’s pride in his work is undermined by a mismatched outfit that is more Oxfam than London Palladium.
But this is Maguire’s play more than any other’s. Her Ruth is a vulnerable mess, finding her humanity within the detached, cynical shell she possesses at the start of the piece. It is mainly thanks to her that, like the Queue itself, The Q manages to be both moving and absurd, often at the same time.
Continues until 16 April 2023
