Cruise by Jack Holden
Directed by Sean Landis
Produced Maybelline San Juan
Movement Director Jeremy Lloyd
Starring Fraser Morrison
Cruise is an intergenerational monologue spanning four decades and over 20 characters, celebrating queer nightlife and paying tribute to a generation lost to the AIDS crisis.
Our two central story characters, one a young twink volunteering at an LGBTQIA+ helpline call centre just months before the Covid-19 Pandemic and Michael Spencer, the caller to the helpline. The young twink is left alone one Saturday and Michael calls on a particular anniversary that meaningful to him.
The plot is backlit by the clubs of London’s Soho in the 19802, Michael is living with HIV in 1984, he’s told by doctors that he has just four years to live. The show questions how to survive and what to do when given this type of information. Do we carry on as normal, live in up or party like there’s no tomorrow? And if you survive, how can he go on living?
This is a beautiful but heart wrenching play, filled with many fabulous characters to help us breath and have lighter moments in some of the darkest times during the trenches of the AIDS epidemic. Some of my favourite characters were the older ladies depicted in the play.
Fraser Morrison has a Mount Everest to climb and does so with great energy and enthusiasm. It’s an emotional, vocal and physical roll coaster.
The lighting by Tom Hicks is stunning and makes stepping into so many different settings a lot easier with the very limited set that is used.
I did find some of the accents off putting, as I did not know what part of the UK they were from or they were more Australian than British. Having lived in the UK a long time and seen most of the country, it stands out like a sore thumb when they waiver or are a strange amalgamation of several at once. This could have been opening night nerves.
The play runs nearly two hours straight through. I personally felt there should have been an intermission and there are two cliffhanger points where it could have clearly happened. I think this would have let the audience breath a bit more.
Take tissues with you and use the bathroom before the show starts. I think it’s definitely worth seeing.
Cruise runs at the Seymour Centre until October 31st.
To book tickets to Cruise, please visit https://www.seymourcentre.com/event/cruise/.
Photographer: Abraham de Souza