Counterfeit Skin

by Jason Charles

Courtyard Theatre Studio, Hoxton

22 Jan to 10 Feb 2008

Jason Charles’ new play, Counterfeit Skin, roots itself firmly in a certain part of gay culture where promiscuity, betrayal and the sex website Gaydar are never too far way.

The action centres on the life of Jake, a spoilt man in his late twenties. He has been brought up by his godfather Leo, a man made miserable by his inheritance of a hefty fortune and lifetime of unwanted responsibility that he didn’t want in the form of the Horlies Chocolate empire.

At the start of the play Mach, a camp, Madonna-loving scene-queen, works on reception at Horlies with Pip, a broke but talented fashion designer whose self-belief has fallen low. Pip’s need for and dedication to the work contrasts with Mach’s disregard for his employer, his rudeness to customers and his insistence on using company time and computers to find punters to rent his body to.

This situation doesn’t last long though; Mach soon realises that Leo is feeling the vulnerability of middle age and would be all too willing to provide security and access to a bank balance in exchange for a little attention.

So Mach moves in with Jake and Leo at a time when Jake is having trouble in his relationship with his boyfriend of three years, ex-alcoholic posh boy Luke. Next door is Ralph, emotional dumping ground for Jake’s problems and someone else whose relationship with him is disintegrating due to Jake’s egocentricity.

Thus is the scene set in the first hour or so of the action, and the rest of the rather mammoth 3 hours is the result of this volatile initial predicament.

Unfortunately though, it’s in the timing that the main fault of the play lies; events unfold a little too slowly. To expose their past, all the central characters have at least one lengthy monologue, which feels a little awkward, and the pace allows us to see two or three scenes ahead for most of the action. In the conclusion especially - a sequence of short scenes quickly following each other - this too easy anticipation is particularly problematic.

There are some good one-liners, particularly from the sharp tongue of Mach, though the performances generally feel a little lacklustre and though each actor occasionally rises for a scene or two, the overall impression is of uninspired performance.

Twenty-five years ago, gay theatre was largely either politicised or ghettoised and to see a play that uses homosexual relationships as a vehicle to touch on human issues of need, responsibility and desire whilst making no explicitly political point is a sign of how far we have progressed as a society.

But the relationship to these issues is not intense enough to really excite an audience’s mind, a more thorough editing process would have seen an hour taken off the performance, and the actors don’t do justice to the quality writing when it does rise to the surface.