My Dear Aunty Nell – Camden People’s Theatre, London

Writer: Tommy, The Queer Historian

Director: Scott Le Crass

The perfect stage design should be a metaphor for the play itself, able to encapsulate and translate its themes as well as provide an accessible entry point into the show. My Dear Aunty Nell at the Camden People’s Theatre does all of those things superbly, a closed Wendy House-sized structure that opens out to reveal a whole life inside, just as Tommy, The Queer Historian’s powerful 50-minute play unfolds generations of stories, support, learning and friendship the writer found at the house of Aunty Nell and the community that formed around them.

Another great way to an audience’s heart is to give them free food and this show is built around the preparation of a stew that everyone is invited up to eat at the end as part of an additional 30-minute Q&A about the performance and the celebration of love, loyalty and community that it grew out of. Tommy is keen to stress that this a shared space, often breaking the fourth wall to explain concepts such as cottaging and famous cottagers, as well as to reflect on his own personal and emotional development as the relationship with Aunty Nell is sketched out.

The narrative is built around two parallel tracks; Tommy’s own memories of Nell and the many stories they shared of life in Brighton, the elders who pass on their wisdom and the life-altering impact that has inspired this show. Alongside this, an actor playing Aunty Nell recounts some of their own story which, like Jack Holden’s Cruise, recalls the heady days of clubs, music and the visceral memory of a more carefree time in the 1970s, along with the impact of loss during the 1980s and the emptiness it left behind.

One of the most interesting aspects of My Dear Aunty Nell is this awareness of memory and its power as well as the faded, illusory quality it develops over time. Tommy takes a moment of self-awareness to acknowledge at the start of the show that his memory of Aunty Nell may be rather rose-tinted and apologises at the end for a “sugar-coated version of you.” And yet memory is the backbone of this play, recognising the importance it holds in shaping the LGBTQ+ community and the ways in which stories are passed down between generations, remembering the legends and the leaders, the good times and the bad, sharing their knowledge and passing it on to protect those who come next.

And Tommy’s show does everything it promises to do; it welcomes the audience in, regardless of whether they are part of the community, and shares all the happiness and poignancy with them, managing to be a story with an ending of sorts but also with so much more to say. And 50 minutes just isn’t long enough to learn all you want to about Aunty Nell and Tommy, particularly the very sudden conclusion which could be a platform for some greater reflection on the character and a chance to peek beneath the sugar-coated veneer to understand why it ended so abruptly. Who was Aunty Nell and what were they running from?

Whether or not you stay for dinner, Tommy, The Queer Historian and Anthony Psaila as Aunty Nell have evoked a world that is both lost and ever-present, and even for 50 minutes, everyone is welcome in it.

Runs until 27 May 2023