Review|Teddy Ferrara at Donmar Warehouse: ‘A powerful and moving performance’
By Will Stroude
Former Royal Court Artistic Director Dominic Cooke returns to directing for the first time in two years, with the British premiere of an engaging and controversial new play by American playwrite Christopher Shinn.
Teddy Ferrara is inspired by the tragic death of Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old American student who jumped off the George Washington Bridge in 2010 after his room mate watched him kissing another man on webcam. Shinn has said that this play is as much inspired by his own experience of feeling suicidal as a young man as that of Clementi’s story and indeed Teddy Ferrara is not the one note ‘homophobia is bad’ exploration of events that you might expect. It’s far more complex than that, asking difficult questions of LGBT people as much as anyone else.
Teddy is a socially awkward young man coming out at University who goes to the Queer Students Group for support, but being socially awkward and not a hot jock, doesn’t quite get the reception he wished for. Gabe, who runs the group and dates the editor of the student newspaper, and is fretting over the sugary, colorful cupcakes he’s brought for the group members when we first meet him, says he’ll add him as a friend on Facebook – but never quite gets round to it. Teddy meanwhile finds a more enthusiastic reaction from online chat rooms where men are keen to watch him masturbate.
Meanwhile the Principal meets with reps of the Queer student group to find out how he can make life easier for them at University with Matthew Marsh giving a great comedic turn as the principal barely concealing his contempt for the politically correct demands.
When Teddy jumps from the roof of the university building the Students Group suddenly becomes a whole lot more interested in him, using his suicide as a rallying call for better treatment of LGBT students from universities leaders. Gabe gets taken seriously by the Principle, the trans student gets to stage a high profile protest and the editor of the newspaper gets a good story. The play seems to be saying that those involved in student politics – perhaps wider LGBT politics, perhaps even wider politics in general – passionately campaign for support and respect yet, in this dramatized case, failed to show each other support and respect themselves. Whether this is a question with macro implications for the way gay people treat each other in the wider world, only Shinn knows, but the play nonetheless asks difficult, unsettling questions of identity politics and healthy sexuality.
Ultimately powerful and moving with sharp direction from Cooke and strong, moving performances from Ryan McParland and Oliver Johnstone in particular, Teddy Ferrara seems to be suggesting that often sex and self importance get in the way of offering real support. The intricacies of politics are all very well and good but we might achieve far more if we were perhaps simply kinder to each other.
RATING: 4/5
Donmar Warehouse, Earlham St, London, until December 5. Donmarwarehouse.com or 0844 871 7624.
WORDS: Matthew Todd