Laundry Boy

39658 original

Terry Orange, the podgy, socially awkward, agoraphobic comic book obsessive (“they're graphic novels”), works day after day in his late father's launderette. The shambolic culmination of stifled creativity and neglect, when his childhood sweetheart, Melanie Baxter, comes in to find him having nozzle-sex with a purple-and-green Dyson, the shame prompts Terry's unstable mind to unravel.

The cast from Horizon Arts—with accompanying fanfare of glorious eighties cheese—each become a different projection of Terry's shattered psyche, as well as animations of his comic book drawings – including the pert, blonde, sexually-willing Perfect Girl and the detestable PVC whore, Beezlebubble. These characters aid Terry in his identity-crisis: is he truly Laundry Boy, the soap'n'suds superhero?

The production is incredibly vibrant: well-acted, well-directed and well-executed, and the movements of the manga-esque characters are inspiredly frame-like. But at the same time the play does suffer a little from its own identity crisis. Its press release bills it as a “perverse romantic comedy”, but the near-suicidal hallucinations of a mentally-ill twentysomething perhaps perverts the rom-com genre too far – and, rather than this being a clever defiance of form, it seems more likely to be a symptom of Philip Stokes (director and writer) returning to the familiar comfort blanket of gritty interpersonal relationships explored in previous Horizon Arts productions (Heroin(e) for Breakfast, Uber Hate Gang). These relationships neither quite hit home as drama, nor aid the humour: unfortunately, a combination of darkness and comedy does not, in itself, comprise "dark comedy".