REVIEW: JERKER By Robert Chelsey at Waterloo East Theatre 28 September - 18 October, 2026
'Remembers the lost' ★★★ ½
The air is forty shades of blue as two men, in separate bedrooms and apartments, have hard core, full-on, explicit telephone sex, their fantasies batted back and forth. JR, a he-man in the Tom Selleck mould with lots of body and a mid-west drawl, is fully invested and drives forward with an urgent need. Bert, slimmer built, more sensitive and a little detached, listens carefully to JR and mirrors him - or whatever the audio equivalent is. The masturbatory conversations finish when their purpose is achieved.
As these mutually relieving conversations continue over evenings, weeks and months, we learn more about the characters as small reveals slip through the sexual content. JR (Paul Dennison AKA Mr Gay England 2021 and Mr Gay Europe 2022) is a military man who served in Vietnam. Recovering from an injury, there’s a subtext of Christian belief as he struggles with questions of morality and sin best expressed by a strange story he tells Bert that involves them both being ‘purified’. He may be married or passing as heterosexual in the world outside these illicit conversations.
Bert (James Lee) is intellectually superior to JR, more relaxed with his sexuality and more nuanced as an actor. Out of the closet, he finds joy not shame in his lived life. Although he finds some of JR’s attitudes curious and despite their obvious differences, the two men draw closer, sharing collective fantasies and intimacies. When Bert is laid low following the bereavement of a close friend, JR listens, and as their conversations start to separate the sexual from the emotional, feelings begin to shift and deepen.
Set in 1980s San Francisco, JERKER is set at a terrifying time when AIDS was decimating entire communities of gay men. Although the word AIDS is not mentioned once, it weaves in and out of the text as an unspoken, fearful spectre. The story arc is built through the phone calls alone - with no action outside these - and each phone call and time span is broken up by a poppy, feel-good music choice of the era (sound design by director, Henry Adams & Scott Michaels) including Madonna, Blondie, Prince and the Eurythmics.
At 85-minutes long with no interval, this 18+ production by Adam Roebuck, has some issues with pacing and transitions. While the middle section, when the two men start to grow closer, is fully engaging , the beginning and end are drawn out in different ways. Theatrically, it starts with a long bang - which gives a new dimension to the cock and ball story - and finishes with a long whimper. The audience understands what's unfolded, and Paul Dennison as JR is left isolated and exposed, probably for too long. That said, this is a moving piece that recalls a time when shocking numbers of gay men vanished from the world forever. Forty years after Robert Chelsey’s debut of JERKER in San Francisco, this revival
invites us to remember all those who were lost.
Cast:
JR - Paul Dennison
Bert - James Lee
Creatives:
Director: Henry Adams
Assistant Director/Intimacy Director: Alice Camarota
Set/Costume: Waterloo East Theatre
Lighting Design: Jonathan Simpson
Sound Design: Henry Adams & Scott Michaels
QLab Programing: Dylan Salinger
Stage Manager: Jack Firman
Photography & Videography: Scott Michaels
