Slices of Life, The Stage Door Theatre, 150 Drury Lane, London. Until 10 August 2024.

4✩✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.

“First rate double bill.”

This double bill directed by Robbie O'Reilly consists of DM by David Heal, a first play, and Roy's Story by Don Cotter, an experienced playwright. The stars are for the evening – Heal's play is very much a work in progress – and Derek Walker's performance as Roy, a seventy year old gay actor looking back on his life and the people who are dead and questioning just why he is the one to survive. Maybe at 70 it is a little young for that but Walker delivers a beautifully nuanced performance, tells some funny stories about his sexual adventures – cucumbers will never be the same again – and some equally sad ones about his relationship with his parents and the director who set him on his career as an actor who dies during the Aids pandemic and how by deciding not to board a tube train because the carriage was too full he missed the 1975 Moorgate crash in which that carriage, the front one, smashed into a dead end wall and 43 people were killed. It is a monologue with a skillful background of songs from his past and one he may well end up playing elsewhere for years to come. Heal in DM plays a young dancer with health problems, job problems and a live in girlfriend partner – a nicely sparky performance from Atlanta Hayward – who has decided she is gay. He has problems coming to terms with that and what we get are his reflections directed at the audience which could be the truth or anything but the truth with interruptions from time to time by Hayward. It merits its place on the bill but basically it provides Heal with a chance to see what works and what does not. The other piece, however, is very good indeed – Cotter knows what he is talking about apparently and has crafted the monologue skillfully although midway there is a moment when we suddenly go back in time which is slightly puzzling. However Walker, singing the songs of his past, leafing through a photograph album, and recalling what he got up to when young and what it is like to be seventy is a delight. This was a fringe theatre doing what fringe theatre should do.

Cast

David Heal & Atlanta Hayward – FM.

Dereck Walker - Roy's Story.

Creatives

Director – Robbie O'Reilly

Technical supervision – Richard Lambert.