A Public Display of Affection: A Slice of Queer History comes to life at the Fringe (Fringe review) 5 Stars *****

As part of the Speakers Series, Jonathan Wilson blessed the Fringe audience with his show. Somewhere between a lecture and an acted piece, Wilson bares his soul to the audience, sharing all the wisdom of elder gays. But with wisdom comes trauma. A lot of the rights we take for granted, including the liberty of public displays of affection, were far from the norm back in the 80s for a generation of LGBTQ+ people who faced police brutality, social isolation and a pandemic that was not taken seriously at first because maybe it was just killing the right people. 

Friends disappeared, and the language used by the media was as violent and brutal as the actions of the police. Wilson puts together a touching, painful and vulnerable piece, talking about his experience as a young gay man, the demonisation faced by the community and the wish that the older generation had left a better world for younger people.

It is hard to consider this a piece of theatre. It’s far too true and raw. It feels like a beautifully acted lecture, a quiet, stripped-back gem in the middle of the Fringe chaos. He had the audience captured as he walked through some of the darkest chapters of LGBTQ+ history and his own personal life, depicting colourful characters with his words, Orchid and Tommy, and making the audience travel back to 1980s Toronto. There, the remains of the old gay ghetto, now the Gay Village, stand like taxidermied versions of what they used to be, while everyone is now out and no longer strives to sneak in unseen for fear of their safety.

The whole narration is held together by a single image: a public display of affection. Something that is so simple now, and that does not carry the same intense political meaning it did back in the day, when young people spilled blood for the right to be seen in public.

A Public Display of Affection, Snug at Gilded Balloon Patter House, 5th till 30th August