REVIEW: Queermania, Nightmare of Dreams, Three Wise Monkeys, Colchester Fringe ✭✭✭✭

Paul T Davies reviews Queermania, Nightmare of Dreams presented at Three Wise Monkeys as part of the Colchester Fringe Festival. Queermania, Nightmare of Dreams. Three Wise Monkeys, Colchester Fringe Festival. 4 Stars Colchester Fringe Website A hugely intelligent, multi-layered piece set in the future, after the Great Bomb, where society has split between Straight and LGBTQ+. The division is strong, but an anti-woke movement, based on the cult and adoration of Thatcher, worshipping her views on being gay and Section 28, is gaining traction, and a young LGBTQ man has attended their rally. Constantly watched by a future Big Gay Brother, he is put on trial, and he confronts the knowledge that he is straight. The audience decide whether to find him guilty or not of breaking their law- section 29. Tom Stock’s challenging creation totally flips the notion of oppression and coming out and shows how divisive the world can be if dogma takes hold. The video work is astonishing, superbly edited, and uses quotes we are hearing now to demonstrate how pertinent this all is. It brims with ideas, but the only thing that stops this being a five-star review is the incredibly long five-minute introduction, in which not much happens on screen and the audience has to wait- this could have been played as the audience were taking their seats. Together with further footage, interesting as it is, it takes a long time before the actor takes the stage. And when he does, Ewen Purser is excellent, engaging perfectly with his watcher, convincing in his frustration of being brought up the “wrong” way, and not holding back on his nastiness. This is a thought-provoking, very well-executed piece, that captures what a Fringe festival should be about.