One-man shows can be tricky, as it’s always a balance between performance and storytelling. Juggling genres is even harder, and Andrew Doherty’s latest show, Gay Witch Sex Cult, tries jolly hard to pull off a campy horror parody.
The plot behind Gay Witch Sex Cult is a sort of 1970s-style spooky shaggy dog story that tends to delight STARBURST readers. Andrew Doherty embraces the role of an incredibly shallow real estate agent who falls in love with the wrong man and gets themselves in a spot of bother when he’s sent to check out a potential sale on a decidedly cursed Norfolk island.
This is a very silly show, in both premise and execution, and it’s a delight to watch Doherty fling themselves across the stage with gay abandon. Our intrepid storyteller spins a tale of talking creatures, weird plants, insane locals and, of course, a gay witch sex cult. Doherty’s character is placed in such horrible situations that in any other story, you’d feel a pang of sympathy at times for them, but Doherty has created a truly unlikeable and funny central character. Calling the lead shallow is an understatement.
And though this is played for laughs, that’s the main issue with the show; the main lead isn’t so much one-dimensional as entirely lacking; fortunately, Doherty plays this for laughs as hard as he can. Doherty turns what should be a creepy little Hammer Horror-style short into something truly dumb and rather fun to watch. The narrative does rely heavily on everyone being cartoonishly daft, but this a silly, spooky fun for grown-ups and utterly brilliant for anyone with a sense of humour that leans toward the queer.
