Writer: Kate Hammer
Director: Rasheka Christie-Carter
Danny is a twentysomething woman whose lesbian flatmate has just told her that she’s “not queer enough to live with me.” For Danny is newly out as pansexual – attracted to people regardless of their gender – and she has fallen prey to the hierarchy of prejudice that can exist within the LGBTQ+ umbrella.
Kate Hammer, who writes and performs as Danny, mirrors her character’s chaotic personal life with a fragmentary narrative that careers between an appointment with her gynaecologist, remembering growing up within the Lutheran church that her mother attended, and sending that same mother’s calls to voicemail in the present.
Several scenes involve the use of a projected PowerPoint presentation, its presence unfortunately diminished by a low-power projection onto the Hope Theatre’s black walls. Often, Hammer is able to compensate through sheer force of will, especially during segments set up as a game show, where she asks audience members to identify whether certain items – carabiner keyrings, rainbows, milk – are “gay or not gay”.
But while each segment is generally crafted well, transitions between scenes and skits are often abrupt and messy, especially they call upon Hammer to rearrange the stage’s minimal set of two chairs and a block. Some scenes feel peremptorily cut short: a sign, perhaps, of Danny not willing to be vulnerable, but not quite satisfying for the audience either.
It is in the longer, more linear segments that Danny’s story seems to settle even as it retains its messiness. As a newly-out “gay baby”, she is happy to discover that she may have caught an STD from her girlfriend, which she sees as a rite of passage; she is less enamoured of the prospect of a possible pregnancy which would be the reminder of her last relationship with a man.
Diversions into more traditional anecdotes, such as attending an antenatal yoga class with lots of straight mothers, threaten to drag Hammer’s work into a more conventional, even heteronormative, storytelling format. But in always bringing the story back to how Danny feels out of place within queer society, the theme of the work always indicates its presence.
What is frustrating is that Hammer never quite seems to land her punches. While indecision and feeling out of place are a necessary part of telling Danny’s story – “the queerest thing you can feel is not feeling queer enough,” she explains – it also means that Must Be This Gay to Ride never quite reaches its queer potential.
Reviewed on 18 August 2023
Camden Fringe runs until 27 August 2023
