Told from the perspective of a gay abuse victim, Do You Come from Gomorrah? is about a child-prostitution ring at a Protestant-run \u201crefuge for wayward boys\u201d in Troubles-era Northern Ireland. <\/p>\n
The story carries clear echoes of Kincora Boys\u2019 Home<\/a>, among other historic abuse scandals. But Do You Come from Gomorrah?, which is rich in dark, bawdy humour, also explores how love and passion, however vitiated, might coexist with brutal exploitation. It is a work of searching emotional complexity that deftly navigates the ambiguities of desire and resilience.<\/p>\n Central to that achievement is an immensely poised performance by Ryan Donaldson<\/a>. As the unnamed Man, he commands the stage with deceptive stillness and negotiates the alternately conversational and biblical rhythms of McGuinness\u2019s text with understated fluency. Donaldson also expertly ventriloquises a memorable series of grotesques who populate his character\u2019s world.<\/p>\n These include \u201cBeastie Billie\u201d, the fanatical pimp in charge of the boys\u2019 home, as well as Steve, an English soldier whom the young inmate longingly dubs \u201cmy fucker, my fella\u201d, only for his lover to deliver him into the clutches of a sadistic officer. <\/p>\n \u201cWe serve the forces\u201d is one of several mordant one-liners that evoke the moral chaos of a culture defined by hypermilitarised machismo and sectarianism. These Ulster loyalists\u2019 hatred of the Catholic Church<\/a> emphasises how they share its worst vices.<\/p>\n A counterpoint emerges in the shape of Keith \u2013 droll, flirty and, though closeted, not determined to purge his self-loathing through sexual violence. There ensues a surreal excursion to a pub owned by his hook-handed father \u2013 who recounts how he lost a hand in a homoerotically charged car crash \u2013 followed by a more conventional form of romantic betrayal.<\/p>\n The details of the Man\u2019s grim odyssey are a bit jumbled in places (as befits a narrative of psyche-fracturing trauma). But, under Sarah Baxter<\/a>\u2019s direction, Do You Come from Gomorrah? remains consistently engaging over the course of 75 minutes. Monologue plays seldom strike such an effective balance between introspection and exposition.<\/p>\n Donaldson\u2019s performance is framed by three dark-grey panels. These at first evoke drab stucco walls that illustrate the Man\u2019s institutional confinement. But, aided by Sin\u00e9ad McKenna\u2019s chiaroscuro lighting, they come to acquire a stark allegorical grandeur reminiscent of an Anselm Kiefer painting. The pool at the centre of the stage and mirror overhead further contribute to an atmosphere of haunted, enigmatic minimalism in Alyson Cummins\u2019s design.<\/p>\n The play\u2019s title alludes to how institutional abuse was sustained by collective complicity throughout the island of Ireland. For the \u201crefuge\u201d is nicknamed \u201cGomorrah\u201d by the characters on the outside, who are well aware of what is happening there. <\/p>\n It\u2019s also hard not to think of Marcel Proust<\/a>. Like the author of Sodom and Gomorrah, McGuinness eschews sentimentality to portray illicit same-sex desire as a theatre of tormented passion, sadism and unrequited love.<\/p>\n![\"Do](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LDYBQORNFRHZBFRTMJ7MV3TB34.jpg\")
Do You Come from Gomorrah?: Ryan Donaldson in Frank McGuinness\u2019s play. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh <\/p>\n