No One Likes Me

With the final sequence of Darren Vizer’s autobiographical one-man show about growing up gay, the material suddenly becomes powerful, complex and disturbing.

Prior to this sequence, the show is truthful, sometimes painful, sometimes poignant, but also rather familiar and lacking in detail.  Mr Vizer, a trained dancer and choreographer, interpolates brief dance sequences, but if the intention is to illuminate the text, the import of these seems vague. 

‘Darren’ appears first in a boy’s primary school shirt and shorts.  What is startlingly recognisable is the big cheesy smile, stretched wide by anxiety, of the little boy who is desperate to please, to be liked.  But he is someone ‘nobody likes’.   Mr Vizer never makes it quite clear exactly why.  I guess he assumes we know: he’s different.  He’s ‘effeminate’.  The isolated, unprotected ‘little boy’ will live on.  His mother says, ‘You should have been born a girl’ – and we know this is not an affectionate remark. 

He wants to be a girl, but his first bit of role-playing is to slip on a frock of his grandmother’s and become a cliché 50s ‘Mum’ – shepherding the children, getting the tea on, waiting for Dad to come home…  This is insightful: Mum and Gran are the women little Darren knows, so if he wants to be a woman…  

But then the show must go through more obligatory steps and stages to reach its apotheosis – and these just don’t have the punch.  The monologue from Darren’s Dad is that of the stock dumb homophobe.  There is no doubting Mr Vizer’s sincerity, but as this is the show’s fourth manifestation, we might expect more from him and his dramaturg Shondelle Pratt. 

Lighting by Bronwyn Pringle and sound design by Zac Kazepis are minimal but effective in bolstering the content of Mr Vizer’s successive personae. 

This show is about what we might call gender dystopia: a boy who wants to be a girl, who feels he is a girl, but what really is a girl?   Is ‘a girl’ a collection of selected traits and modes that add up to a caricature or a cliche?  It is this question that is raised most strongly in that final sequence. 

It is perhaps predictable that ‘Darren’ graduates to a drag show in London where he dons black tights, a long black evening glove and a wig.  As a drag queen, it seems he is relatively okay – or, we infer, he thinks he is.  At least cross-dressing is totally acceptable and expected.  But one night he is picked up by a blonde Adonis – or, as ‘Darren’ puts it, ‘an AFL type’. 

Back at Darren’s flat the AFL type begins with fellatio, but talks to Darren as if Darren is a woman.  Darren looks down and comments, ‘This is not normal.’  That gets a laugh, but it is a portent.  He then fucks (there’s no softer word for this) the fellow and then the fellow fucks him.  Darren begs him to use a condom; the fellow ignores him.  ‘I love to fuck a bitch,’ he says.  It’s implied that Darren gets AIDS from this nasty – and confusing – encounter. 

And then Mr Vizer dances – frenetically, desperately, almost in a panic of self-loathing – tearing off the tights, the glove, the cheap wig - until there is just Darren.   A middle-aged, gay, bald man in his black knickers.  This sequence cuts through all that has preceded it and justifies the show.   It is searingly honest and Mr Vizer stands before the audience naked in more senses than one.

Michael Brindley