GuyMart. Kings Head Theatre.

George Lacey’s spoof comedy musical GuyMart, currently running as part of the MT Pride Lab at the King’s Head Theatre, relocates the milieu of gay ‘dating’ apps to the retail environment. In some ways it is a logical makeover. Hook-up apps, straight or gay, are often transactional in nature – an offer of something in return for something. Setting up a profile can be an object lesson is self-objectification. One devises an image focussed on attracting a target market. The object becomes product to be, if not purchased, then bartered for something or someone of equal worth.

GuyMart’s gaystopia sees the entire process relocated to the floor of a supermarket, overseen by sleezy store manager Alphie (Jack Jacobs) and camp sidekick Freddie (Nick Sedgwick). Users list themselves as stock (which Lacey serendipitously finds rhymes with cock), find yourself an aisle, and wait for the punters to pass by, trolley and MasterCard in hand. Customers can even click-and-collect (which by happenstance rhymes with dick-and-collect – there are double-entendres here that even a fully florid Julian Clary would, pardon the pun, choke on). Think a massive multiplex brothel on a retail park in Bromley. Why not “grab your basket and step inside”.

Into the woods of GuyMart steps Matt (Finn Whelan), a kindly misguided soul who, looking for love in all the wrong places, chooses to list himself. The neophyte Matt imagines he is entering a kind of gay Waitrose, but this is more of a fleshpot Poundland than a partner-owned love market. Alphie lists the newbie on the “Best Buys” aisle which is a polite way of referring to the fresh meat counter. Matt soon finds himself caught in a Groundhog Day loop of sex dates, continually “spurned and returned”, put back on the shelf for the next shopper to peruse. Will he ever find the love he so urgently desires? Enter the equally love-starved customer Joe (Viktor Andonov).

Views will vary as to how generalisable Matt’s encounters are to the diverse group of men who use hook-up apps. The expectations some have are akin to contemplating a trip to TK Maxx. In prospect is an arduous hour flicking through racks stocked with last season’s miss-matched cast-offs, but which promises an occasional dream-purchase hidden in the middle aisle. Expectations rarely go deeper than that, which raises the question as to why even a man so gauche as Matt would list himself at GuyMart in the first place. He must know he would be happier perched on a stand at the Ideal Home Exhibition.

Perhaps Lacey is trying to make a point about the addictive nature of hook-up apps. One cannot help feeling Matt’s real addiction is to an idealised (frankly hetero-normative) conception of love that many LGBTQ people find restrictive.

Aside from One More Try, which has a pleasantly funky vibe and some decent harmonies, the ensemble struggle with a series of mostly forgettable songs. Sedgwick valiantly searches for, and sporadically finds, the high notes in the closing number Lost In The aisles. In the main these four talented and likeable actors are wasted on characters that are not so much ciphers as half-formed hieroglyphs. You pays your money and you takes your choice, but the best advice here is go to Lidl instead.

Book & Lyrics: George Lacey

Music: Richard Seaman

Director: George Lacey