by Peter Callaghan

In Soho where gay boys are often found rentin’

Writer’s longing for love mirrors that of Denton

Given the ever-increasing number of stand-up shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (comedy listings take up 132 pages in the official programme, whereas theatre comes a distant second at 96), and given the ever-increasing dominance of multi-venue operators such as Assembly, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and Underbelly, the 69-year-old and by all accounts still the largest arts festival in the world is fast turning into an extension of Live at the Apollo where familiar faces churning out predictable observational routines about Straight Men Are From Mars, Gay Men Are From Uranus are given top billing over more experimental theatre-makers such as Sam Rowe in Denton & Me at Summerhall’s Anatomy Lecture Theatre who are relegated, ironically, to the fringe of The Fringe.

But that’s where most of the diamonds are found. You just have to dig around a bit to find them! And being on the fringes of society is one of the central themes of Rowe’s 75-minute-long one-man show, first seen at the now defunct Arches in February 2015, which is inspired by the journals of English writer and painter Denton Welch whose vivid descriptions of longing for “the perfect friend” are interspersed with Rowe’s rueful reflections on looking for love almost a century later in the not so ho-ho depths of Soho where sex is on tap but the love that dare now speak its name and marry is in frustratingly short supply. “Only connect,” said English novelist E M Forster. A sentiment echoed by both Rowe and Denton who unlike screen goddess Greta Garbo do not “want to be alone”.

After receiving a copy of Denton’s journal from a highly camp family friend with a penchant for ballet dancer’s thighs, Rowe as a “trying to be a playwright” narrator working as a barman on Old Compton Street mirrors Denton’s search for love and belonging through a series of time and shapeshifting scenes directed by Magnetic North’s Nicholas Bone in which vases become people, a watering can a London downpour and a miniature wooden mannequin a poetic symbol for a vulnerable everyman stripped of pretence.

Though Denton’s life was short-lived – after being hit by a car at the age of twenty he eventually and painfully succumbed to his injuries thirteen years later on 30 December 1948 – he found an unlikely yin to his yang in the form of strapping land-boy Eric Oliver. Though, according to Rowe’s finely-crafted self-penned script, the performer’s own whirlwind romance with a wealthy Cypriot banker offered limited returns. But the parting theme of love sidelining if not eliminating loneliness is far more uplifting, moving and satisfying than, say, a commendable twenty minute comedy set stretched to breaking point by inane observations about “Are there any Australians in the room?”

Peter Callaghan
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