Homos, or Everyone in America (New Theatre) ★★★

Written by Jordan Seavey. Australian Premiere. New Theatre. Part of Mardi Gras+. 6 Feb – 9 Mar, 2024.

What makes gay relationships different to straight ones? Set around the peak time of the fight for marriage equality in the US (2006-2011), Jordan Seavey’s play Homos, or Everyone in America looks at tug of war between hetero-normative coupling, polyamory and what life for a gay couple could be like once things become equal. Well it sort of does…

The audience is hit with a case of The Time Traveler’s Wife-syndrome as we are thrown into snippets of scenes from up and down a couple’s timeline. Slowly as we get to understand them both, we can grab onto context and the scenes we saw one way evolve into something deeper (not unlike getting to know someone you’re dating). On stage, this is akin to watching Nick Payne’s Constellations, as our two unnamed leads, “The Academic” (Edward O’Leary) and “The Writer” (Reuben Solomon) quickly alter their performance in short black outs as we jump from moment to moment.

From a coy first date to a jealous argument to an odd encounter in a soap shop, this time-hopping is discombobulating. Once you get to the end it’s clear this jumbled structure does little other than try to distract you from a very straight-forward and trope filled story. Boy-meets-boy. Boy-suggests-threesome. Boy-loses-boy-who-becomes-a-hate-crime-victim. 

This production at New Theatre has a sharp sense of timing as well as great supporting work from Axel Berecry as “strapping Dan” and Sonya Kerr. The two leads, O’Leary and Soloman, are excellent at dealing with the complexities of their performances. Each transition is quick and clean, leaving no confusion for the audience. 

But sound problems make the play feel longer than it is. The actors seem to shout every line, and with a hyper-verbal character like The Writer, it threatens to strip the performances of any nuance and begins to grate as time goes on. This also caused issues as the actors raced through some of their lines making them almost unintelligible. The large open space of the theatre swallows the intimacy of moments.

What is Homos, or Everyone in America saying about gay relationships? Ultimately nothing fresh or different. It lacks the punch of a Torch Song Trilogy, the discourse of The Inheritance, or the specificity of The Boys in the Band which it name drops. Maybe it was written too soon after marriage equality began (it was first produced in 2016), but more recent plays like 2023’s Blessed Union offered more insight.