He has a girlfriend. He is looking for work. He spends his free time seeking anonymous sexual encounters with men in public toilets.
The central character in Henry Roberts’ Close Enough to Touch is never named. That absence feels appropriate for a play concerned with the division between the person somebody appears to be and the desires they cannot acknowledge - even privately.
Presented by Leeds-based Red Ladder Theatre Company and Hull’s Silent Uproar, the one-man production will tour the North of England and Midlands from 16 October to 9 November.
Yorkshire actor Stefan Race will inhabit Roberts’ unnamed character, carrying an intimate story about sex, secrecy, shame and the inability to articulate desire.
The play enters the world of cruising: the practice of seeking sexual encounters, often anonymously, in public places. But the subject is not being used as exotic scenery or offered up for easy shock.
At its centre is a more familiar human conflict. What happens when desire refuses to fit the identity somebody has constructed? And what happens to the people around them when silence becomes easier than honesty?
Roberts says he wanted to explore “the ambiguous sides of our desires” - particularly those that resist a straightforward category and may contradict the way people understand themselves.
The distinction is intrinsic. Close Enough to Touch does not appear to be offering a simple narrative of concealed sexuality moving towards a moment of liberating self-definition. Its character’s desires are messy, as desire often is. They may not lead towards a new, stable label capable of making everything coherent.
This is more uncomfortable territory: a place where pleasure and shame coexist, where the urge to be touched is accompanied by the determination not to be known.
The language used to promote the production moves repeatedly between humour and pain.
Silent Uproar artistic director Alex Mitchell describes the play as “messy, filthy, funny and heartfelt” - a story about the shame that can emerge when queer desire no longer fits neatly inside the life someone has built.
“It asks what happens when that shame, or our own cowardice, grows because we don’t have the words to say what we really want,” he says.
That absence of language is one of the play’s most significant ideas. People are often encouraged to regard disclosure as a straightforward moral good: tell the truth, admit what you want, become who you really are. But honesty depends upon somebody first possessing the words with which to be honest.
Roberts’ character appears unable to explain his desires to his girlfriend because he has not yet found a way to explain them to himself. His secrecy protects the life he knows, while simultaneously threatening to destroy it.
The spaces in which his encounters occur reinforce that division. A public toilet is ordinary, functional and shared, yet it can also become a concealed place within public life: somewhere intimacy takes place without being allowed to become a relationship, a history or an acknowledged part of the self.
The production asks an audience to remain close to a character behaving in ways that may be dishonest, damaging or difficult to defend. Empathy here does not require absolution. It requires an attempt to understand what fear, shame and unspoken desire can make people do.
The show carries an age recommendation of 16 and content advisories for descriptions of sexual activity, sexual assault and strong language.
The development of Close Enough to Touch is also a story about how new theatre reaches a stage.
Roberts’ script was longlisted for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s nationwide 37 Plays project and has previously been performed at London’s Theatre503. But its path to this new production came through Red Ladder’s commitment to reading and developing unsolicited work.
The company promises to read at least the first ten pages of every script it receives. Roberts’ play progressed through that process and was presented as a rehearsed reading with Leeds Conservatoire before Red Ladder and Silent Uproar agreed to develop it into a full touring production.
For a new playwright, that's the kind of support that can be life-changing.
British theatre frequently celebrates new voices while offering limited routes through which an unknown writer can move from a document on a laptop to a professionally produced play. Red Ladder says it produces only one show in most years. Choosing this one is therefore a substantial act of confidence.
“New writing is at the heart of what Red Ladder has been doing for nearly 60 years,” says the company’s artistic director Cheryl Martin, who will direct the production.
“Henry is a brilliant new northern voice in the world of theatre, and his powerful script tells the kind of story you don’t come across every day.”
Founded in 1968, Red Ladder emerged from Britain’s radical agitprop theatre movement. Its work has long been concerned with taking theatre beyond conventional stages and supporting stories rooted in working-class lives and underrepresented communities.
The story is clearly visible in the route planned for Close Enough to Touch.
The production is to play established theatres in Leeds, Hull, Huddersfield, Derby and Scarborough, but it will also travel to Queen’s Mill in Castleford, Junction in Goole, Grove Hall in South Kirkby and the Cluntergate Centre in Horbury.
It is a tour that recognises that difficult, formally ambitious new writing does not belong exclusively in metropolitan studio theatres.
Silent Uproar brings a complementary history to the collaboration. Established in Hull in 2013, the company creates work for what it calls “queer and rebellious crowds”, using humour and theatrical spectacle to approach subjects that can be challenging, taboo or politically charged.
The partnership gives Roberts’ first major touring production the support of two companies prepared to place trust in audiences - and in their capacity to sit with ambiguity.
A one-person play intensifies that demand.
There is no other character physically present to provide distance, correct the account or offer the audience a morally simpler position. Everything must be carried by one performer: the seduction of secrecy, the pleasure of the encounters and the harm accumulating beyond them.
Race, who trained at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts, was selected after Martin felt that his understanding of the character was immediately apparent.
“He was the standout, matching the character so closely - even at audition - it hardly seemed like acting,” she says.
The production will place audiences close to a man whose behaviour may provoke recognition, discomfort, anger or sympathy - sometimes at the same moment.
That is what makes Close Enough to Touch potentially more than a play about cruising.
Its larger subject is the distance between appetite and identity; between what someone does and what they can bear to call themselves. It is about the stories people maintain so that their lives remain intelligible - and the consequences when those stories can no longer contain the truth.
The character may not have a name. But the shame, longing and fear surrounding him are unlikely to feel anonymous.
The production is recommended for audiences aged 16 and over. It contains descriptions of sexual activity and sexual assault, along with strong language.
Tour information and booking links are available HERE
Header image: Close Enough to Touch, touring this autumn. Credit: Mark Ratcliffe and Split Design.
