Gay is just a three-letter word

Stephen Simm is, by reputation, up and coming. Press releases for his work, Fourplay, record established writer Deon Opperman calling him ‘South Africa’s next best playwright” — something to live up to at a young age.

Opperman may well turn out to be correct if the current work, written and directed by Simm, is anything to go by. Fourplay is the story of two couples and the mess they get themselves into when gender barriers begin to break down. Built around coincidence – a married man called Adam (Craig Jackson) gets involved with a confused youngster called Tom (Owen Swanson) after replying to an advert in the classified section of the newspaper.

Both blokes have previous involvements: architect Adam is trying desperately to keep up appearances with his pretty wife Sarah (Diaan Lawrenson) and Tom is meandering through an austere fling with a stone-faced older guy called Luke (Andre Odendaal).

So much for context. What the characters represent, in the almost mundane insignificance of their lives, is what makes Fourplay interesting. Set in Johannesburg (or is that ‘stuck” in Johannesburg), the writing elevates the crap drudgery of city life to rich poetry.

Simm can write. He can do the expected – like making gay poetry out of the communal, dark room sex experience – and the unexpected, like articulating the dilemma of an ageing man in the throes of a mid-life crisis.

Andre Odendaal as Luke is hard and uncompromising. But that doesn’t make him less needy. Here Simm makes some relevant observations about gay South African men across the generations. Basically, the younger ones take things for granted while the older ones understand that freedom of expression is something of a privilege.

Who, then, is in a worse position? I don’t particularly like the pay-off line in the press release, that ‘gay doesn’t necessarily mean happy”. This would imply that, no matter how free, gay men can never achieve a sense of fulfillment. Surely in his own play, even with his own bad direction Simm shows us moments of gay satisfaction.

With his character Tom (clearly the voice of the playwright) Simm would have to admit that the youthful dilemmas of love, drug-taking and socializing are not exclusively gay, but generally human.

What is more interesting is to witness how a character like Tom is able to manipulate the adult-world with his sexuality. This has echoes of the Broadway hit Six Degrees of Separation.

Fourplay is a frugal production but it’s definitely worth a visit.