Writer/Performer: Andrew Doherty
Funding new theatre writing is a precarious business, and Andrew Doherty is struggling for cash for his latest piece. He has left his job at Deloitte, and his grandmother had the audacity not to die, so he hasn’t got any inheritance to fall back on. So he must do a deal with the devil – or the devil’s representative on earth, who goes by the name of Arts Council England.
The mayhem that follows centres on a series of scenes from the play Doherty has been commissioned to write. As an out gay man, ACE has insisted that he must stay in his lane and write something about the gay experience, that it must be Sad and Meaningful, and so must, of course, be about AIDS. Thus is born the sad gay play that gives the hour of comedy its title: a chronicle of the HIV crises of the 1980s and 1990s, “AIDS Actually”, written from the perspective of someone who wasn’t there.
There is a particular cadence to how playwrights construct bad play dialogue on subjects they know little about. That is in plentiful evidence here, as Doherty’s supposed protagonist Barry Manlove exposits his way through clubland with a group of friends, only to worry about “that last batch of semen I just took” and who then rapidly becomes diagnosed. It’s a technique whose roots lie deep within comedy entertainment, from Morecambe and Wise to The National Theatre of Brent. Name drops and needle drops take sly digs at everything from Angels in America to It’s a Sin, as Doherty fabricates a world in which he’s writing the worst play about HIV anyone could possibly imagine.
The pastiche of the “sad gay play” is just the amuse bouche for crazier digs at Arts Council funding, though, especially when his workshop is interrupted by a video call from masked ACE assessors. Subplots about how Doherty ticked the “I’m an orphan” box to secure additional funding, despite both his parents being alive, permeate his interactions with the malevolent funders.
Some of the meanders Doherty must take in order to fill the hour do not quite come off. A segment in which his story is suddenly relocated from Soho’s gay scene to a Geordie mining village (another ACE demand, fusing an obsession with “national relevance” with a cultural bias that insists characters should be poor and stupid) is a case in point. The Billy Elliot parody with streaks of Kes is brilliantly observed, but feels disconnected from the material on either side.
That said, Doherty is consistently funny throughout, and even at his weakest, the satire remains hilarious thanks to his innate connection with the audience. “AIDS Actually” might be the most dreadful piece of theatre ever threatened, but in depicting its fictional creation, the sheer silliness of Sad Gay AIDS Play provides us with anything but sadness.
Runs until 21 March 2026
