There was a time, and not that long ago in real terms, when being gay was not only illegal but carried the death penalty. Yet people were and some even went so far as to form relationships. Fraught with danger they may have been, but they happened, and today they are fairly mainstream. But what of the future? Wouldn’t it be good to be able to see how attitudes towards ‘non-normal’ relationships have changed in the far future and compare them to the past? Well, thanks to The Homosexual’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I caught at The Glitch recently, you can.
It’s 1895, and all of London is fascinated by the trial, on charges of sodomy and gross indecency, of Oscar Wilde. Two people who are very interested are vicar’s son, David (Caolan McGinley), and his friend Jonathan (Rain Reid). Young men who have very different viewpoints on (whisper it gently) sodomites. David’s father has told him of the evils of two men being together, how it makes God cry and angels die. This leaves him highly confused and also full of guilt, as he has unspoken feelings about Jonathan. Luckily, those feelings are requited and the two boys start to imagine a future together away from London and its prejudices.
Meanwhile, sometime in the far future, on a distant planet, engineer Avi (McGinley) has had a fling with an intergalactic hitchhiking alien by the name of Atha (Reid). Avi is worried that the elders of his outpost will not be accepting of a human/alien relationship, and Atha is worried that, according to their guide, humans only mate with one person in their lives. Realising there may be a future for them, they head off, complete with Atha’s towel, in a ‘borrowed’ spaceship to be together. Thanks to the spaceship crashing, it tears a narratively convenient hole in the space-time continuum, enabling the two couples to meet and discuss their respective lives on the space-time continuum.
As stories go, writers Nat Neri & Caolan McGinley have come up with a narrative that is fun from the off. The two stories aren’t told in a straight timeline; the past alternates scenically with the future, a device that leads to a lot of enjoyment and some fast changes for the two actors. These are accompanied by some pretty impressive scene changes in the dark by stagehands Elio Fantini and Sebastian Cory. There are some slight narrative issues where logically things didn’t work for me, but we can put them to one side a bit and appreciate a well-written piece of theatre, especially as both Reading and Paris come in for a bit of a beating.
Both actors, with some skilful direction from Nat Neri, do an amazing job in both their roles, and Elio Fantini’s costumes give an immediate sense of place and time, which saves a lot of exposition. I absolutely loved the large – I’m guessing A1 – copies of the newspapers. Particularly the adverts, but in my attention to detail way, I would have liked to see text, pictures, etc. on both sides of the paper rather than just one.
All told, The Homosexual’s Guide to the Galaxy is a really enjoyable and entertaining piece of theatre. This was one of those shows where I had a smile on my face from the start, my attention never wandered and the hour-long run time flew by.
I’m giving four stars to this really good two-hander show. Wait a minute. Four and two in one sentence. That’s 42. Maybe The Homosexual’s Guide to the Galaxy is not just a first-rate play but is actually the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Who knows? But anyway, get along to see it before it blasts off to another venue.
Review by Terry Eastham
The Homosexual‘s Guide to the Galaxy is a comedic exploration of queerness through the centuries, going from Victorian England to a post-gender distant future. A two-hander, it follows two couples who mirror each other: Jonathan and David from the 19th century, and Atha and Avi from the 34th century. When both couples decide to run away from their respective realities, a warp in the space-time continuum causes them to meet, sparking conversations that will change the way the characters see themselves and the world (or rather, worlds) around them.
David/Avi- Caolan McGinley
Jonathan/David- Rain Reid
Co-writer/ Director- Nat Neri
Co-writer- Caolan McGinley
Producer/Tech- Poppy Coomber
Stagehand/Costume- Elio Fantini
Stagehand- Sebastian Cory
THE HOMOSEXUAL’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
The Glitch
22 to 27 April 2026
