Review: Dirty White Boy, Trafalgar Studios

Written for Time Out

“Honey,” says Angie, “I am Soho!” Given she’s a post-op transsexual with new bits that resemble Cheddar Gorge, you can see her point, but Soho is not as easily reducible as all that. Where Clayton Littlewood’s blog – a diary of his two years running the titular shop on a Dean Street corner – succeeds in capturing the phantasmagoria at the heart of W1, this naive stage adaptation filters out the flotsam and sets up a handful of regulars as normative. Here, however, baby and bathwater are one and the same.

Alongside Angie, there’s Chico – a moneyed American with a rent boy in constant tow – and veteran eccentric Sohoites, Leslie and Charlie, who rekindle their relationship with a little nudge from Clayton.

Narrating proceedings, Littlewood is quietly likeable providing flashes of flair in his beady-eyed observations. David Benson goes at the accompanying caricatures with gusto, finding humour at the expense of detail. Phil Willmott’s over-literal direction means the whole thing trundles along with amiable mediocrity.

Until, that is, Alexis Gerred – a fresh-faced pop-bot utterly incapable of irony – reappears with another limply delivered and frankly embarrassing musical interlude. For a moment, Soho looks as deviant as Disneyland.