Please note: This review – like the production itself – discusses the topics of homophobia and queer conversion therapy. Please take care when reading and click off this article if these subjects are triggering to you.
★★★
It’s hard to showcase the cruel reality of queer conversion therapy when your story focusses far too much on illusions and fantasy. In Rory Thomas-Howes’ convoluted Con-Version, the return of a traumatised Son (Elan Butler) to his family home instead gives way to a bizarre tale of a magical mother’s fight to maintain a sanitised household run on toxic positivity.
This stands in stark contrast to the play’s opening, where Mother (Ruth Redman) brings a crying baby into a church, hymns are sung and the tables behind her are rearranged into the cross. References – and the eventual inclusion – of the church pastor (Alex Britt, who also plays the Neighbour’s Boy who previously had a relationship with Son) also indicate we’re dealing with the harmful and dangerous practice of queer conversion therapy in religious settings.
Butler’s performance as Son is fragile, and certainly demonstrates a repressed individual on the brink of a devastating breakdown. His delivery is stiff and direct, as one would expect when an institution has attempted to strip them of a core part of their identity, and when he does snap, the outcome is explosive – that is, until Mother resets the narrative and we’re back at the dinner table again.
That’ll be the ‘versions’ in Con-version – the ability of Mother to wipe the slate clean if any undesirable emotion (such as hate, a word she doesn’t allow in the house) ever comes to the fore. At one point, we see multiple stagings of Mother bringing some food to the table, as a few culminate in an outburst from Son – each one accompanied with a jarring whooshing sound. Redman plays Mother with a chilling calmness which hides a lot more beneath the surface, and ropes in Son’s Fiancée (Phoebe Ellabani) into the twisted utopia of the house. Any dissent from family members – even over Father (played with banality and an airy demeanour from Timothy Harker) reading The Telegraph – has to be controlled and silenced.
Oddly multiversal, it would have been far more interesting if it revolved around Mother’s character as a magical and manipulative matriarch, and how other family members tire of her constant contortions to find the perfect version of reality. We could have seen each character lose a grip on what’s real and what’s an original thought, rather than just Son, who’s continually jumping between rekindling and repressing his sexuality. We see a hint of this with Sister (Molly Rolfe) at the end of the play, the same conclusion which leaves Son’s ‘recovery’ from conversion therapy open-ended.
If Con-version was a story of a mother’s gaslighting and fantasies, then it could well have been a powerful psychological thriller, but in its name alone, it suggests an exploration of conversion therapy which actually ends up losing its purpose and meaning amongst the multiverse.
Con-version is now playing at VAULT Festival until 19 March.
Production Images: Paper Mug Theatre.
Disclaimer: I was invited to watch ‘Con-version’ for free in exchange for a review as a member of the press. I did not receive payment for this article and all opinions stated above are honest and my own.
Liam O'Dell 