boobytrapped ****

Pulsing beats in a nightclub. A man named Simon hooks up with Kevin, a cis man in a gay bar. Kevin finds out Simon's trans, he's not happy about it. Kevin grabs him, he's much more imposing. In this moment of violence, a flash, and their bodies have swapped. Simon is now in Kevin's cis body, and Kevin in Simon's trans body. 

So begins boobytrapped - Freddie Haberfellner's sophomore play with No Tits Theatre.

His script is witty, warm and a gift for him to perform. It is unashamed to explore the difficult nuances of gender dysphoria but does so with a beautiful levity. In some ways, it's a process of reckoning with what positions, mannerisms and inflections make a man, and this makes it a wonderfully theatrical act. But the script itself is never theoretical, its entertaining first and foremost, situational and always sympathetic and kind to its characters. 

Haberfellner is the stand-out of the production, and gives a really beautiful performance.

He's brave, he's funny he's empathetic. As is his stage partner Ermis Makides, whose performance provides a neat mirror to Habefellner. Both of them are never caricatures, despite the broad-stroke situational style of the material. This is partially because Habefellner's script is really good, but it is also a beautifully judged relationship drawn by director Romeo Lau. The symbols most important to Habefellner's text - especially a photograph of a young Simon and his grandmother - are given a nice prominence. 

The play's many locations - the club, public transport, Simon's bedroom, a game of twister — are sketched with sufficient contextual clues, no doubt hugely helped by Callie O'Brien's pitch perfect sound design. The play has a third speaking part in one of Simon's flatmates, and techie Oli Fuller is up to the job. Perhaps the play becomes slightly relentless in its situations, I could easily see a longer version of this, or maybe a version which sketches the character through conversation rather than situation – although this would make it lose its light touch.

Ermis Makides's Kevin is a really complicated character — he's not particularly likeable but Habefellner is still keen to understand him. It's a gift in a world of scripts in which moral codes are sketched so subconsciously that even the writer judges before knowing. I don't think there's many people in the audience who would think Kevin behaves well during the piece, but he is still treated with empathy. We get to know his familial upbringing, and his experience as a cis queer man. But crucially, our understanding of this experience doesn't cheapen Simon's. 

As mentioned before, this is a brilliantly judged statement on gender dysphoria, and it hits on a coup-de-theatre for Habefellener to embody Kevin throughout most the performance. Such grand phrasing might come across as a little silly - but it's so subtly magical, such an understated but beautiful exploration of what it is to have gender — to perform it, affirm it, struggle with it.

boobytrapped is a wonderfully light piece of theatre with serious themes. A nicely judged comedy received well, with genuine formal innovation and a team of genuinely exciting creatives. I thoroughly recommend it!

theSpaceUK (on the Mile) until 29th August.