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Back in the 1990s, before The Only Way Is Essex and Jersey Wives ruled the small screen and Big Brother soiled our souls, the trashy talk show was king, luring in audiences with lurid titles like, ‘I’m In Love With My Uncle’ and ‘Gender Bender Blowout’.

Ronnie Larsen’s Sleeping With Straight Men is loosely based on a scandal that rocked one such programme, The Jenny Jones Show, in 1995 when a gay man, Scott Amedure, admitted to having a crush on his straight best friend, Jonathan Schmitz - a confession that led to deadly conclusion.

Balancing biting satire with cartoonish comedy, the first act begins with the young, gay and, yes, flaming Stanley (Wesley Dow) scraping every ounce of glamour from his crap home town of Pontiac, Michigan. After forming a bond with local all-singing, all-dancing drag queen Sally (Martin Milnes), the pair head to their local restaurant for a good gossip. There, Stanley falls under the spell of dishy waiter Lee (Adam Isdale), who fails to raise an eyebrow at his shameless flirting.

Tired of small town life and craving the glamour of New York, Stanley responds to a request from the Jill Johnson Show, who are looking for people to confess their secret crushes live on air. And so, with a simple call to 1800-233-JILL, both Scott and Lee march towards humiliation in front of an audience of 12 million.

During act one, Larsen’s script opts for camp and sassy comedy which, when it comes to Amy Anzel’s excellent turn as the glossy TV presenter, is perfectly pitched and hideously cold-hearted.

The darkness that lurks beneath the show’s comic froth is only revealed during the show’s very short second act, when Stanley’s over-the-top campery is boiled away, revealing his predatory desire as well as Lee’s unthinking repulsion and drunken curiosity in his admirer.

At this point, Sally’s heartbreaking rendition of ‘Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart’ and Jill Regan’s understated and convincing turn as Lee’s grief-stricken girlfriend, Karen, make for a moving climax that all but erases any doubts over the show’s huge gear shift and lack of sub-plot.

Benefitting from slick direction and blink-and-you’ll-miss-them scene changes, Sleeping With Straight Men is more John Waters than The Laramie Project, but beneath Larsen’s big and brassy characters lies a sharp swipe at the dark exploitative heart of daytime TV.

Sleeping With Straight Men, by Ronnie Larsen
Above The Stag Theatre
15 Bressenden Place
London, SW1E 5DD
www.abovethestag.com

11 January - 26 February 2012