Two couples thrash out their variations after their nine-year-old sons are seen kissing at college. The straight pair, Sarah and Matt (Amy McAllister and Philip Correia), fake to be open-minded however suggest the son of the lesbian couple, Amira and Chloe (Seyan Sarvan and Eleanor Wyld), will need to have initiated it. “You realise you're primarily accusing our baby of being some sort of intercourse pest?” Amira shoots again.
With this primary showdown, Zak Zarafshan’s debut appears set to comply with within the custom of explosive household satires with dad and mom coming to blows over their children (from Yasmina Reza’s play God of Carnage to Christos Tsiolkas’s novel The Slap). However The Boys Are Kissing takes a wacky flip and introduces supernatural forces within the type of two homosexual angels (Shane Convery and Kishore Walker) who exist on their very own Mount Olympus, of kinds, trying down on these mortals and meddling mischievously of their lives.
Their arch, campy world (with glittery New Romantics apparel and Seventies David Bowie make-up) intercepts the narrow-minded, small city ethical panic sparked on a mums’ WhatsApp group over the kiss and the inclusive storybooks that Amira donates to the college. Theplay’s points vary from the trauma of popping out to LGBTQ+ kids’s books.
It's an audacious course to take – fantastically far-fetched and pleasant on the entire. The angels, of their tune and dance numbers, appear like RuPaul’s glamorous lip-syncers and don't a lot interrupt the human drama as lead it in a number of amusing, and key, scenes.
Whereas the play has oodles of chutzpah and attraction, it isn't with out its hiccups. Lisa Spirling’s manufacturing is nicely carried out however full of points and saggy in tempo. It falls into telling, even preaching, with earnest argument round tolerance and the tone switches, jarringly, from fizzing satire and farce to simplistic didacticism. That's significantly the case within the protracted remaining set-piece.
However it's laborious to carry this in opposition to a play that's so adventurous in type, and so entertaining with it. Zarafshan has daring expertise and this debut is an thrilling discovery.
At Theatre503, London, till 4 February
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