“Two poofs walk into a bar, and the barmaid says “why the long faces?”
Jack Holden’s Cruise is a gritty, lively, sexy, and heartbreakingly sincere production by the incredibly talented and incredibly queer team at Fruit Box Theatre. Housed at the relatively new KXT on Broadway theatre, the show is a monologue which tracks a phone call between a young queer hotline volunteer and the older queer man who picks up the phone and divulges on his life, his love, his loss, and his hope. Having seen several Fruit Box shows at this point, and being astonishingly comforted, represented, and amused by all of them, I took my glass of wine and prepared for the show.
Where to begin but with oodles of praise for the absolutely phenomenal Frasier Morrison? From the second they walk on stage, Morrison glimmers with this kinetic energy that drives so much heart and depth into every single character depicted throughout the show. From the naive but curious Jack, ever so quickly thrown into the deep end during his time as a volunteer for the queer support hotline Switchboard, to the older drag queen with a guttural voice and hunchback who pointed at me and called me a pansy, Morrison breathes so much life and care into every single role in a way that makes them laughable, tangible, and grounded all at once. Even when playing the “nymphs”, what I believe we’d now consider “twinks”, who so wantonly plead that “we like the shit” in reference to the camp reverence of enjoying a location for its terribleness, Morrison is a delight and totally in control.
There were genuinely moments when I felt like I was watching multiple actors performing a scene, and had to snap myself back into the fact that all that talent was being held in one body.
The show is kitschy, with bright block colouring and (a detail I particularly loved) a retractable disco microphone that descends like a miracle from above. But it’s also incredibly technically coherent, considering its tight scope. Director Sean Landis worked closely with a movement director and accent coach, and it shows in how intricately constructed Morrison’s performance is. There are no moments of nothingness, no unnecessary silences or pauses that don’t serve a purpose.
No, every moment feels curated to tell us something, whether that be the profound importance of picking up a phone, or the need to remember the lineage of those who’ve passed. Even the stage lay-out, with four quadrants floating between a red couch, yellow desk, blue dancefloor, and green bar, all having corresponding lighting and soundscapes, ebbs and flows as seamlessly as if we were living in a memory.
In a sense, we are.
Cruise is described as an intergenerational monologue, and in many ways it’s a pathway between the (actually quite recent) history of the AIDs crisis, and the times we find ourselves in now. There’s a disconnect between these two concepts that the show attempts to reignite.
My dear friend Calum, having cried four times throughout the performance, put it succinctly: “for every queer person our age, we’re so disconnected from that history. The things they bring up, no one talks about, because so many people died, and the older generation isn’t really there. We’ve defined what it means to be queer in absentia of a history of a queer identity.”
Calum and I turned to each other when Michael, the older caller, revealed his HIV diagnosis to Jack. Michael recounts the story, doing the test and being unable to process the results, and when probed, reveals he was twenty-two when it happened. Twenty-two. Calum and I turned to each other, because that is the age we are now.
It is worrying to consider what queer culture we are left with when the last generation lost lives and culture like sand running through fingers. Stories like these remind us why we must keep the door open to the queers who survived. Stories like these ground kink, cruising, and clubbing as integral parts of the queer community, because they gave us the space to joyously relish life when it was so flagrantly ripped from us.
We as a contemporary community are both rebuilding queer culture from scratch, and sorting through these untraceable pieces that have found themselves littered in our history and lingo.
The show was developed alongside several community consultants, spanning UK and Australian 80s culture. Although the show is incredibly profound and decidedly Aussie in its sensibilities, it’s still fundamentally grounded in the British culture of Soho and pubs and cigarettes and funny accents. I wonder how we must go about cultivating this cross-cultural connection here, on the ground in Aus. Where do these spaces exist to share stories? Who is willing to open their hearts, and who is willing to open their ears in return?
Something that’s still gnawing at me is the singular blue ladder hanging in the corner of the room that is never touched. Like Chekhov’s gun, I kept hoping that the principal performer would climb on at some point as if taking that metaphorical trip to the Heavens we anticipate arriving for the whole show.
The ladder is splayed under the lights as Michael writhes from the simultaneous pain, pleasure, and ecstasy of dancing till his body gives out on him. It dangles in the background as Michael’s lover, faced with his own mortality after his first night out exhibiting HIV symptoms, pleads with him: No matter how sick they get, no matter how much his body betrays his mind, make sure that they always stay for one last drink.
It’s a searing moment, the first real bite in the show as to how lost and hopeless the fight against HIV was at a time when it was called “the gay cancer”. In a sense, though, is this plea not what life is? Looking hurt in the eye and refusing to acknowledge it. Fighting to keep dancing in the face of inevitability. Seeing the ladder and refusing to climb it, knowing that you may never come down again.
Cruise is being performed from the 12-22nd of February at KXT on Broadway.
