Reviews

My Gay Best Friend (Salford Lowry)

My Gay Best Friend makes for a humorous yet meaningful night, says Helen Jones

WhatsOnStage Reviewer
Louise Jameson and Nigel Fairs star in My Gay Best Friend
Louise Jameson and Nigel Fairs star in My Gay Best Friend

My Gay Best Friend is a two handed play about a mature woman and her best friend, who, oddly enough, is a gay male. Rachel works at Boots on the beauty counter and meets Gavin when he knocks over one of her displays while moonlighting as a cleaner there. As they get to talking in the pub afterwards an unlikely friendship is formed.

The play opens with Rachel having locked herself in a cubicle in the ladies toilets. She is supposed to be taking part in a talent contest, but her best friend Gavin has not turned up to support her. Gavin is having his own problems at that moment – he needs to give a specimen for his lesbian friends as they have asked him to be the sperm donor for their baby – but somehow that urge just isn’t arriving!

The play is principally a series of monologues to the audience, interspersed with the occasional interaction between the characters. We hear not only about how they met, and the highs and lows of their friendship, but also of the things that have happened in their lives to make them the people they are today.

Louise Jameson, who also wrote the play, is convincing as the loud-mouthed, brash but insecure shop assistant, while Nigel Fairs is her perfect foil as the laid back Gavin, who everyone tells their life story too because ‘he has that sort of face’.

My Gay Best Friend is witty and with well drawn characters, but with a dark soul which leaves you thinking.

Short and sassy, it makes for a good evening’s entertainment.

– Helen Jones