Daniel’s Husband at the Marylebone Theatre – review

Michael McKeever’s drama Daniel’s Husband has been making waves across the pond since its 2015 Florida premiere, picking up numerous accolades and touching audiences from its Off-Broadway runs to productions all across America. Now, almost a decade after it first burst onto the stage, London audiences finally get their chance to experience this potent exploration of love, commitment, and the meaning of marriage as it makes its highly anticipated UK premiere.

At its heart are Daniel Bixby (Joel Harper-Jackson) and Mitchell Howard (Luke Fetherston), a couple who’ve been together for seven years. Daniel is a successful architect, whilst Mitchell is a writer of commercial gay fiction who freely admits he’s abandoned his more serious literary aspirations for the lucrative world of romance novels. They have the perfect house, perfect friends, and Daniel’s mother Lydia (Liza Sadovy) even adores Mitchell like a second son. There’s just one problem: Daniel desperately wants to get married, and Mitchell is philosophically opposed to the entire institution.

Rounding out this intimate world are Barry (David Bedella), Mitchell’s agent and close friend – a fortysomething hedonist with a penchant for younger men – and his current boyfriend Trip (Raiko Gohara), a sweet-natured home healthcare worker. What begins as a breezy dinner party, filled with sharp banter and games, quickly shifts into darker territory when an unexpected crisis forces the comfortable debate about marriage from the realm of theory into brutal reality. As the story jumps forward through time, Mitchell finds himself confronting the very real legal and emotional consequences of his principled stance, whilst Daniel must grapple with whether love alone is enough when the structures he values are absent.

McKeever’s script is the production’s greatest strength. What starts as laugh-out-loud parlour comedy subtly shifts tone as events and personalities unfurl. In a world where fundamental rights aren’t always so fundamental, the play asks uncomfortable questions about love, commitment, and what we’re willing to sacrifice for those we claim to cherish most.

The ensemble cast is uniformly brilliant. Harper-Jackson and Fetherston radiate as the titular couple with a natural warmth and affection that makes their journey all the more engaging. Bedella and Sadovy add brilliantly nuanced interpretations in emotionally difficult roles; Bedella tactfully navigating the unenviable best friend position as things take a turn, and Sadovy mordant as the overbearing mother, deftly giving the potentially villainous role a heartbreaking depth. Gohara provides a launchpad for much of the first act’s comedy with his doe-eyed interpretation of the naive and comparatively uneducated Trip.

Alan Souza’s direction is pitch-perfect. This could have easily been played purely for laughs and tears, but Souza has elicited something more subtle and, ultimately, more real. Through his interpretation, we see a greyscale of emotions where no one is particularly right or wrong, and we, the audience, are left to navigate what we see against our own beliefs.

Daniel’s Husband achieves in 90 minutes what many plays can’t come close to in double that time. It’s a story that will make you laugh, think, judge, and cry… and it will stay with you long after the curtain comes down. This is as close to perfect theatre as you can get.