Writer: Zak Zarafshan
Director: Lisa Spirling
It shouldn’t take divine intervention to make us review and re-examine long-held beliefs and attitudes. However, this play shows that sometimes that may be just the push we need.
Each of the four people (married couples Amira and Chloe, and Matt and Sarah) in this play seem like they’re good, decent folk trying to do the right thing. They’re friendly, smart, middle- class and loving. Still they get it wrong.
When their sons Lucas and Samir, both aged nine, kiss in the playground it sparks off ructions in the community, with these parents caught in the middle. They need to work through not just the kiss itself but also the other kids’ reactions, the other parents’ discomfort with the kiss and Amira and Chloe’s same-sex marriage, and the usual school-gate politics magnified and distorted through the prism of bigotry.
Luckily, they will have a duo of cherubs from the Celestial Order of Queer Guardians working behind the scenes to guide them. Who doesn’t want a guardian angel? In this case they oversee a multi-generational cohort of billions, not just a single person. They have a responsibility of “personally shepherding the queers through the wilderness of life,” bringing age-old wisdom to the issues that present fresh to every generation.
These cherubs engage with each of the characters, providing helpful prompts to get them thinking deeply about what’s going on and how they feel. They’re the catalyst for a huge amount of self-discovery and growth, bringing each of the four parents to a greater understanding of themselves as well as their responses to the kiss and the local politics. They’re also fabulously dressed in wings and crowns and armed with a great line of sarcastic, bitchy, no-nonsense patter.
It gets pretty serious. Tense conversations with accusations, misconceptions and defensive deflections flying everywhere. That’s leavened by how genuinely funny these debates turn out to be for the audience, and the oddness of those sections where the cherubs pretend to be parents, neighbours and others to chat with the main characters. The duality – this glamorous and sometimes silly presentation married with the serious content and context – continues throughout, becoming a running theme in all elements. Weighty discussions about identity, desires and community are lifted by moments of absurdity, becoming far more accessible and impactful than could have been possible without the mix. There is, however, a lot of this discussion, and with so much ground to cover it becomes quite overwhelming trying to keep it all in mind.
Seyan Sarvan’s character Amira has a crystalline, clear-eyed confidence and viewpoint that helps cut though the attempts of the others to talk around topics and get us straight to the brutal point. Shane Convery as one of the Cherubs brings an unapologetic vibrancy to the show, with an accent almost tailor-made to deliver deadpan punchlines and, as his co-Cherub, Kishore Walker makes a cracking professional stage debut. The living rooms of both couples are served by the single set from Aldo Vazquez, nice enough for quiet rurality but with a hint of purple-glittered heaven seen through the back door where the cherubs emerge from.
The show makes an interesting effort to present each character’s attitudes as reasonable, until they’re rebutted or argued against very capably. It’s fantastic to see space given on stage to discursive pieces that encourage not just acceptance, but also bring about deep thought and attempt to bring genuine understanding and empathy to topics marked by real complexity. Zak Zarafshan’s script however, pulls in a range of topics and viewpoints, debates them, and leaves us with no clear takeaway.
As it finishes, things are quite tense for a while then suddenly a relaxed and healthy friendship breaks out among the couples. A happy ending, but the point seems to have been to focus on the journey – which gets lost.
Runs until 4 February 2023
