Gay Witch Sex Cult
It’s all go with snooty estate Kaelan Trough, his recent marriage to Jeremy, Kaelan wanting a big event and his husband’s tastes more subdued, the imminent arrival of their first child preceded by the gender reveal party, currently in final preparation, his rivalry with colleague Poppy, and the specific request of reclusive client Dean Pygmyous, seeking an island property off the east coast of England.
Throwing himself bodily into his work with a diligence that Poppy could never hope to emulate, a suitable location might be found in Norfolk and Trough makes his way there, rowed across by the taciturn ferryman, the island largely uninhabited but the site of an abandoned church and hospital, and well forested with trees contorted to resemble human forms, though it is said that for centuries it was home to a gay witch sex cult.
A show which promises a great deal with its title which remains largely undelivered, any sinister thrills of dark deeds and debauchery of the Gay Witch Sex Cult are lost beneath the squealing performance by Andrew Doherty, deploying camp as a weapon of mass destruction like a caricature from a seventies sitcom, Trough a self-obsessed idiot blind to the obvious clues writ large as to his true service to the island and its brotherhood.
The jokes not particularly funny, the audience are constantly invited to laugh at Trough rather than with him, nor is it possible to generate the necessary atmosphere of dread in such circumstances, a shame as the sound, lighting changes and the few practical effects of the staging might have worked more strongly in other circumstances, though the eventual reveal of the breadth of the cult membership is somewhat diminished by having every member of the audience ink stamped upon entry.
Gay Witch Sex Cult continues at the Pleasance Courtyard until Sunday 25th August
