Since 2008 I’ve had the good fortune to appear at the Soho Theatre, and I’ve consistently been impressed with its line up of marvelous comedic acts. The venue has become the epicenter of creative, modern performance not just in London, but also around the world. Soho Theatre supports and develops loads of intriguing, hilarious and important comedy shows. I’m very pleased and happy to be on their marquee.
The show I’ve written for this season, Scott Capurro’s Gay TurnAround, is about marriage. I meant to write about mine, and some of my misgivings entangling my relationship with my Brazilian husband, however my mother’s voice kept singing in my ear. She had a quite pleasing mezzo-soprano range, and was married thrice; my Grandmother wed five times, twice to the same man, because she didn’t kill him the first time. Obviously my marriage role models are complex, like marriage itself, and I intend to spend the hour wondering why gay men, particularly me, have agreed to take part in this Victorian melodrama entitled Matrimony, an endless narrative that nobody in my family has ever successfully produced.
Marriage means binding, bonding and apparently no cruising. Suddenly, because of a singular document and a couple of inexpensive two-for-the-price-of-one rings purchased in Whitechapel, I’m like Hugh Grant after Four Weddings and A Funeral opened to great fanfare. My cottaging days are over, which at my age might be for the best. Almost nobody wants to see a grizzled, graying Hollywood has been circling the drain at Baker Street toilets. But without that freedom, without a strange cock banging me in the face during the lunch hour, I’m choking, and not in the way I’d prefer.
With wedlock, a word that sounds like sorcery, both partners are contractually obligated to behave within the law. I’d prefer to question authority, throw caution to the wind and disappear at a nude yoga conference. This makes me the bad guy. But I met my husband in a club. (Read: gay sauna). So why does he not trust me to do the right thing and only bareback healthy, hopefully young, people?
Warning: More than just a therapeutic hour or three, the show might coerce you to ask yourself, or the person seated next to you a.) Can we rethink this engagement thing? b.) Do you really even like who I am? or c.) Even though were strangers, or because we are, wanna come back to mine and fuck?
“‘If you thought comics like Ricky Gervais pushed boundaries then nothing will prepare you for Scott Capurro. Having won the coveted Perrier award in 1994, the San Franciscan comic has gone from strength to strength while refusing to sell out, making each show more uncompromising than the last. He is, in my opinion, the bravest and funniest comedian on the circuit.’ GQ Magazine
Scott Capurro’s Gay TurnAround, Soho Theatre, London February 6-11, 2017, 7:30 pm