Just Don’t Shout it from the Rooftops at the King’s Head Theatre

Of all the things members of the LGBT+ community go through in their lives, probably the hardest is the first time they decide to ‘come out’. Everyone has their own story to tell, and they are all unique in some respect. My own involved the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question, a famous male singer, and a very perceptive elderly lady.

Actor, magician, theatre and opera director Freddie Brook has spent the past few years collecting some of these stories and turning them into a one-man verbatim show called Just Don’t Shout it from the Rooftops which he has recently been performing at the King’s Head in Islington.

Over the course of the roughly 45-minute run, Freddie brings to life a range of individual coming out stories and demonstrates the many different approaches both the outee and the recipients of the information take to the news. There is the young lad who, in the words of his less than sympathetic parents, ‘ruined the family holiday’, the soldier who took on a regiment and the son of a publican, forced to confront his fears. Each tale is unique and each feels very real in Freddie’s more than capable hands.

At a time when homophobic and transphobic hate crime is on the rise, and when the most powerful man in the world seems hell-bent of rolling back LGBT+ rights, Just Don’t Shout it from the Rooftops is a welcome addition to the LGBT+ theatrical stable. Freddie has said that this is a work in progress and that he would like to tour it in schools and colleges. From what I saw, it was pretty much a completed work. I think the only thing I would add would be to identify the name and age of each participant as they start their story. Knowing that story 1 is coming from “Paul aged 16 at the time” would, I think add that little extra bit of connectivity for the audience watching.

All in all, a first-rate piece of theatre that raises awareness and will give hope to many a worried person not sure whether they should take that one small step and one giant leap out of the closet and into the world.

Review by Terry Eastham for London Theatre 1