REVIEW: THE OLD QUEEN’S HEAD at The Lion and Unicorn 20 – 24 September 2023

“Elizabeth says… Elizabeth told me… Elizabeth and I…” ★★★★ ½

Sunk in post-break-up hell, David—written and played by David Patterson—bickers with his old imaginary friend, Queen Elizabeth, about what he should do next. Call, text, write a formally appropriate letter? (“Dear Frasier: When we met, I was 30 and you were…younger.”) For the next hour, he takes us through his life journey so far, conjuring up ex-boyfriends, uni mates and grandmothers along the way. Patterson seamlessly switches between them all, without sacrificing a scrap of his protagonist’s emotional journey.

It also helps that he’s hilarious.

Ben Anderson’s staging lets David Patterson’s words and performance shine. He makes beautiful use of the Lion and Unicorn’s intimate space: The audience enters to a pre-set world of white columns and red carpet, draped silk and a glittering crown, with a bust of the deceased monarch staring judgmentally across at a pile of empty gin bottles, poppers and co. The lighting and sound-scaping, too, elegantly support the storytelling—taking us from childhood tea-parties and uni elections to overpriced Eurostar journeys and French cafés—without ever distracting from Patterson’s powerhouse work.

The show’s concept could easily be gimmicky, a way of disguising monologues as semi-dialogues to keep things fresh through the 1-hour running time. But that’s not the case. The Old Queen, here, is a clever personification of everything David both wants and fears most: His need for status, admiration, success, attention, and his parallel terror of embarrassment, rejection and ridicule that is trapping him in the closet. Then, when he does come out, she is the nagging voice at the back of his mind telling him to not be too much, too obvious, too different from the norm—the warning that society will reject him if he shows who he really is.

The story’s depth comes from the fact that she—that is, David—is (mostly) wrong. At every turn, when David opens up to his friends and family they are warm and supportive. His friends guessed long ago, his mother always knew. The Old Queen’s Head is not, really, about a man fighting to be accepted by a homophobic society; it’s about a man fighting to accept himself. This crescendos into a beautiful last scene where David is forced to explain to his grandmother, in front of a packed train full of rapt eavesdroppers, that yes, he is gay. Public exposure, everything he ever feared—and it ends up being just fine.

“I was always loved,” David realises.

This is an impeccable show.

Written and performed by David Patterson

Directed by Ben Anderson

Reviewed by Anna Clart