Close Enough to Touch – Bramall Rock Void, Leeds Playhouse

Writer: Henry Roberts

Director: Cheryl Martin

In prospect this joint production by Red Ladder and Silent Uproar seems unlikely to appeal – a one-man show based around cruising London’s less savoury public toilets – but in fact Henry Roberts and Cheryl Martin have crafted a surprisingly subtle and sympathetic portrait of a young man totally confused about his place in the world.

They are helped by a terrific performance from Stefan Race, moving effortlessly around the physical objects on set and the complications of the script, communicating directly with the audience and always vigorously active, but with no discernible object in view. M is a pretty empty individual. Having landed a talented and industrious girl-friend in Isla, he follows her everywhere: to Bristol where she’s at university, then to London where she obtains promotion after promotion and supports him. He seems like a little dog (she calls him “pup”).

He meanwhile finds himself out of work – and the opening sequence suggests he’s likely to remain so: oversleeping on his way to a job interview, accidentally insulting one of the interviewing panel, another rejection. So he spends a lot of time in the library – or so he tells Isla. In fact he has discovered the dubious charms of cruising. He explains to the audience how it works: the unspoken look, the hand-washing routine that can extend a toilet visit to an hour or more.

So he is deceitful and a liar, not only to Isla, but to his parents who pay a visit from the North – mother and father deftly characterised by Roberts’ witty script. But there is something likeable about M, perhaps the fact that he has no illusions about himself and his own weakness.

M survives a meeting at Charing Cross Station with a man who breaks the unwritten rule: you don’t take it beyond the toilets, pursuing M into W.H. Smiths. He panics at a restaurant with his parents when he thinks the waiter is a familiar face, but it’s only his guilt clocking in. Eventually fears of having a sexually transmitted disease drive him to a clinic and from there a sequence of increasingly manic events unfolds.

All cannot be as it was, but finally we see M where he started, in a bus shelter, eyeing a man at the bus stop opposite.

The whole production fits together perfectly as a portrait of a lost young man. The set (Cory Shipp designer) is stylishly simple, as befits a production which is touring halls of many different shapes and sizes. There is a bus shelter, with a bench which also serves as M’s bed and a litter bin which Race can sit on, pivot on, swing on and generally have fun with. On-set captions are an aid to following Race’s quick-fire delivery. Beyond the glass of the shelter are projections, most often rain, and Mark Melville’s sound provides a constant track to M’s confusion, punctuated by explosive bursts of sound.

Runs until 24th October 2026, before continuing to tour.