Writer: Sam Buss
Director: Gemma Draper
Not enough people realise that, since antiretroviral treatment, an HIV infection is no longer a death sentence. And less people understand that regularly taking those drugs means that people living with HIV cannot pass on the virus. Sam Buss’s Focus On The Positives seeks to educate its audience. Parts of it resemble a lecture, but if more people sit up and take notes the better.
Intriguingly, Buss’s intended audience is young gay men. In this one-man play Buss tells his story in the second voice. You meet a guy in a club, you go home with him, you find out that he’s HIV positive. ‘What would you do?’ seems to be the question here.
You like him, but you worry what your mates will say when you tell them. Will they be concerned and worry that you’re being safe? Or worse, will they call you brave? A few times Buss acts out these scenes: the initial drunken meeting at the club, the first date at a Pizza Express. Here, the unnamed character he plays is endearingly coy, endearingly nervous, and these familiar moments, pivotal in any romance, are some of the best in the play. We really want to see how their relationship will enfold.
But towards the middle of this 45-minute show, the story (your story) is left on the back-burner, and instead, Buss gives sex education lessons which discuss how PrEP, a medication available on the NHS, can stop people contracting HIV. Most of these scenes are done for comedy such as the Countdown skit on the letters of HIV. Unfortunately, some of the jokes fall a little flat, but Buss’s charm ensures that it doesn’t matter too much. That these comic scenes don’t quite work only means that Buss’s character appears more authentic, more vulnerable.
Sitting on a bed that surprisingly revolves, Buss is a confident performer and delivers his own script flawlessly. Some of the extended metaphors about pizzas and jigsaw puzzles sometimes feel a little laboured, but again, Buss’s performance easily rides out these minor issues.
Of course, plays like Cruise, soon returning to the West End, encourage a younger generation to take in interest in their history, to understand where their freedom came from and at what – human – cost. But in Focus On The Positives, Buss is more urgent in his demands that younger gay men do their homework when it comes to sex and relationships with men who are HIV positive. Doing research and not putting themselves first would make them better people, Buss declares. These young gay men could help lift the burden of those three letters.
Runs until 30 July 2022
