Showing for a limited run at the Apollo Theatre, Cruise is a heart wrenching, life affirming trip back in time to a young man’s last night on earth.

The play is based on a phone call performer Jack Holden received working at LGBTQ+ helpline Switchboard. Holden sets the scenes by narrating from within a bare boned set: a frame-like structure that revolves from one scene to the next. By now it’s clear you’ll need to be hanging on to his every word.

Jack finds himself alone in the office, his co-worker Kevin hasn’t turned up. Hungover after a wild night and freaked by a chilling phonecall, Jack is about to walk out and never look back but just as he heads to the door, the phone rings once again.

Rather than ignore someone in need, Jack picks up. The caller introduces himself as Michael and after a spot of back and forth, he begins to tell Jack about his life.

With the blink of an eye Jack is gone and we are back in the 1980s. A wide-eyed Michael moves to London and before long shacks up with “Slutty Dave”. For years the two frolick through the hedonistic streets of Soho, before being diagnosed as HIV positive and tragically, are given just four short years to live.

Defiant to the end, the two men promise to live the time they have left to the fullest. When Dave passes two years after the diagnosis, Michael loses himself in drink and drugs and on what is supposed to be the last night of his life, heads back into Soho to say his goodbyes.

Holden flips between spoken word accents and musical mannerisms to capture the ignorance of youth, the marginalisation of the queer community and Soho’s sordid history. He effortlessly becomes quirky and eccentric characters, the type you’d expect to see on a night in the West End, before jumping back into himself without so much as a pause.

The use neon lights and electronic 80s tracks from sound designer John Patrick Elliot and lighting designer Prema Mehta is nothing short of excellent and captures the essence of Soho so splendidly that you barely even have to use your imagination. You forget you’re in the Apollo watching a one man show. Instead you’re just around the corner. You’re heading down Old Compton Street. You’re flirting in the Admiral Duncan. Or the Kings Arms. Or Soho Square.

The AIDS crisis devastated the gay community and this play is a tribute to that. The highs and lows of Michael’s story are as comedic as they are tear-jerking. The themes of loss, suffering and defiance come in abundance, similar to 2021’s heart-breaking It’s A Sin. But, as sad as Cruise is, it’s a celebration of life and in honour of the queer lives lost.

Cruise leaves you humbled but wholesome. Ultimately though, Cruise’s message is an uplifting one of hope, living your life to the fullest and getting out there to carpe that diem.

Love a bit of theatre? Check out our review of Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show.

Feature image sourced from Cruise Instagram