This Much (Or An Act of Violence Towards the Institution of Marriage)

The big argument for same sex marriage was that it’s just marriage. Same as for straight people. John Fitzpatrick’s play asks whether that is, or should be, the case. He tests the water after the sea change in public opinion towards homosexual couples.

Gar (Lewis Hart) and Anthony (Simon Carroll-Jones) are in a stable relationship heading towards marriage, but it’s unfulfilling. Gar meets carefree Albert (James Parris). It’s the choice between a new and exciting fling with Albert, who shoplifts and waggles his cock in public, or Anthony who has a NutriBullet and cleans a lot.

The dialogue is carefully bland, capturing the rhythms of platitude couples settle into. Fitzpatrick asks whether, aside from gender, there is anything inherently different about gay relationships. Anthony and Gar are gay but there’s barely a hint of queerness in the way they act and dress. It’s “just about fitting in” as Anthony says. Is it good enough to be a “parody of a straight family”? 

Alex Berry’s compact set, lots of chipboard cubes holding clutter, expands into different arrangements until eventually exploding into chaos. Transitions between scenes are accompanied by intense physicality, not only from lugging bits of set around, but from passionate, punishing embraces between Carroll-Jones and Hart. 

Full-on nudity from Hart and Parris is an important part of the play: the willingness to strip anywhere, anytime is a symbol of Gar and Albert’s unsettled nature. By contrast, a toe-tapping wedding playlist running throughout—Whitney, Aretha et al.—is the sound of conformity.

Fitzpatrick takes the conventions of romantic drama and applies them to a gay relationship in a probing piece, comfortable in the ambiguities it raises about being gay and being in love.