Toxic: Pulling Back The Glittery Curtain of LGBTQ+ Pride
Nathaniel J Hall Interview. Plus The Best Of The Rest March 15-21
By his own admission, actor, writer and theatre-maker Nathaniel J Hall has perpetrated more sexual misbehaviour in one action-packed evening than I have in my entire lifetime. Growing up in Stockport, Manchester, his contact with the Northern city’s lively gay scene was early and devastating. His first foray into an adult relationship left him HIV+ at 16 years old. He didn’t tell his family for 15 years.
Hall was always destined for the theatre. His mother, a keen amateur actress, trod the boards whilst she was pregnant with him.
“I've always been involved. I used to go down to that theatre with my mum at weekends. It was originally an old church building. It felt slightly haunted and had a dusty smell. As kids, hiding between the stacks of costumes and so on was very exciting.”
From there he progressed to the National Youth Theatre, as well as Manchester’s leading youth companies — Royal Exchange Youth Theatre and Contact Young Company. His acting degree was bestowed by the University of Leeds, the first two years spent at the soon-to-be-shuttered Bretton Hall, which once upon a time stood on a hilltop between Barnsley and Huddersfield.
“I lived a train ride away from Manchester city centre. So actually, by the time I had got to university age, I was out in the big city and partying, you know, although I was a kid.
“I wanted something different… I wanted to go to this beautiful green space. And, you know, it really focuses you on your course. Less distractions, which I think is great.
“And you can always tell. People come and [see my shows] and they come up to me afterwards and they go, without knowing, ‘you went to Bretton Hall’. Because there's a style in the making and they recognise the style because it was very unique in terms of its teaching and very different to other drama schools and teachings.”
Success did not come instantly. In 2019, fed up with his life as a jobbing actor, Hall made a show about the stigma of living with his diagnosis. Called First Time, it was a smash at the Edinburgh Festival, and on the back of it he was cast in It’s A Sin. This was Russell T Davies’s Channel 4 TV drama about five friends growing up in the shadow of AIDS at the start of the 1980s. (My era exactly, as it happens.)
As the only HIV+ member of the cast, he inevitably became the face of living with the disease. He sat on a lot of TV sofas. But the harrowing experience of once being a 17-year-old with a death sentence left its mark.
“I think Toxic's a really good exploration of the impact of that diagnosis. because if you'd asked me that question up until about five or six years ago, I probably would have said ‘Oh, it doesn't impact me. I got on with life and it was fine.’
“Like something happened to me, it was shit and you can't change it.”
At the time he became HIV+, Hall explains to me, the only drug regime available to him would have had serious side effects. So the medical policy was not to prescribe automatically. His University tutors were sympathetic, allowing him extensions when his weakend immune system led to tiredness and infections. But he put up a good front, involved in campus activities, which meant there was inadequate support for his deteriorating mind. “We didn't really talk about mental health in the way that we do now.”
That changed after he went public with his diagnosis.
“When I came out with my HIV status publicly… I had a lot of therapy alongside that. I started to realise that actually, I suffer from Generalised Anxiety Disorder, and Post Traumatic Stress, Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and I had all the symptoms and signs of those conditions.”
Far from making him a more powerful performer, as per the “suffering artist” myth, his poor mental health seriously got in his way.
“I started to realise, reflecting back, just quite how much of that [poor mental health] was in play there. So I wasn't just nervous, like I still get nervous, every performer gets nervous, it's important. I was anxious, you know, I had gut-wrenching anxiety that blocks your vision and your ability to function.”
He self-sabotaged. And the nature of that self-sabotage became the material for this play — especially how it affected his ability to form healthy long-term relationships.
“Toxic shows the impact of unresolved trauma on a domestic relationship from both sides. So from my character’s side, he's living with HIV and the other character’s side… their father left at a very young age.”
Hall’s thesis, on the basis not just of his own experiences but after extensive consultation with what he terms the LGBTQ+ community, is that outrageous behaviour is used as a masking technique for mental distress.
“The show is all about the impact of shame — and shame lives in the shadows and in secrecy… It's quite a complex show with a lot of complex themes, and it doesn't necessarily have the answers.
“I think it’s really interesting to hear people's thoughts and feelings afterwards, because it's a show that sits in some of the darker parts of what it is to be LGBTQ+.
“It's great being LGBTQ+… I always say this, LGBTQ+, people are magic. But we are marginalised on multiple fronts. And that marginalisation has an impact. And again, that's what Toxic looks at.
“It's not saying queer people are bad people, you know, or queer people, you're bad for taking drugs, or you're bad for having promiscuous sex or whatever. It's about going, what are the reasons why people have to self medicate? Or why do people in our community find we have higher rates of depression, higher rates of anxiety? So one in four, actually, gay bisexual men experience domestic abuse in their lifetimes. That’s [similar to] heterosexual women.
“So all these things happen. And one of the things I say with the show is, it pulls back the glittery curtain of pride.”
Hall’s mother is a devout Baptist, and he sees parallels with aspects of that religion — confession, acceptance, unconditional love — in the therapy that has worked for him.
“Trauma lives in the body. It's physical. My partner is a psychotherapist and it is a physical thing and it lives in your limbic system until you process it. You have to take it from living inside of you into a memory.
“The act of writing a story or writing a narrative through therapy, for example, is the same thing. You process it so that you're not living in that reactive state. And so I can say, ‘Oh, I was groomed, sexually groomed at 16’. And I can say that to you now and not feel any kind of anxiety about that because I don't live in the trauma of it anymore.
“That is, it's happened, but it's a story and I can put it back in the brain, and file it away, and get on with my day.”
Hall, educated at a time when gender ideology was being normalised throughout the arts sector, is one of the pronoun people. He comes across in the interview as being charming, emotionally intelligent and without a protective carapace to shield him from the cruelty of the world. He isn’t someone like me, who sits and thinks, and understands intuitively (because I can see it using my interior vision) that the linguistic building blocks of supposed queer theory don’t actually fit together as a cohesive logical system. It ‘doesn’t make sense’, in other words.
And so he doesn’t question the framework of ‘trans’, ‘non-binary’, ‘cis’ and ‘queer’ meanings by which he understands his life, and which informs his writing.
I’m a sceptical old terf — I’m buying none of it — but I find it intriguing that so much of what he is saying is congruent with the practice of figures like Dr David Bell, Dr Az Hakeem and psychotherapist Marcus Evans, all of whom fell foul of ‘affirming’ gender-ideology hardliners at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. Each insisted in his own way that trauma — sometimes childhood, sometimes parental — is usually in the mix, and must be addressed, when an individual presents with gender distress.
But Hall, who describes himself as gay and ‘cis’, places the emphasis differently:
“As a community, quite rightly, we have to find pride. We have to rid ourselves of shame, we have to celebrate in the street, we have to show people, we won't be silenced, we won't be segregated, we won't be oppressed.
“But behind that there is still a lot of pain. And there is still a lot of shame. And that impacts us in ways that we're not always open to talk about because no one wants to admit it. But I think the reason why there's not that much pushback is because I come with my own experience…. I've done those things.
“And I'm questioning are they the healthiest options? What's going on here? What are the reasons why more gay men find themselves using drugs during sex, which is called chem sex, which is an issue, particularly in cities... And it is really useful for allies, for people outside the community to try and understand, it's not just hedonism, it's not just gay people just want to party and have no responsibilities. There's a reason why people are escaping pain and sadness and oppression and homophobia, transphobia.”
Hall spoke to me a week or so before he was due to go into rehearsals for Toxic. “It's just spreadsheets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets,” he grumbles mildly. “No one told me that when I went into theatre, that it would just be a lot of spreadsheets.”
He doesn’t mean it. He’s doing what he wants to do, which is using his artistic voice to advocate for a better understanding of what he thinks of as the LGBTQ+ world. Toxic was aired briefly in 2023 — now, on this Arts Council England-funded tour he’s sharpened and clarified the script, making it sexier and including a strand about the destructive impact of racism in an already challenging domestic situation.
A sour-faced little terf fairy whispers (truthfully) in my ear that dealing with intersectional themes of HIV+, sexuality, gender AND racism won’t have harmed his grant application. But nonetheless his research for the show revealed:
1 in 3 people with HIV face stigma from their family, friends or workplace (Terence Higgins Trust)
Half of global majority LGBTQ+ people face racism from within the LGBTQ+ community (Stonewall)
1 in 4 gay and 1 in 3 bisexual people suffer domestic abuse after age 16 (Stonewall)
Gay men are 3 times more likely to use illegal substances than heterosexual men (Crime Survey, England and Wales)
Half of LGBTQ+ people have faced depression, 3 in 5 have faced anxiety (Stonewall)
1 in 8 LGBTQ+ people aged 18-24 have attempted to end their life. (Stonewall)
Do I trust any Stonewall UK statistic from the post-Ben Summerskill era? Not really. The organisation’s decline from credibility has been precipitous in recent years. But, nevertheless, it feels as if Hall is onto something important. As political commentator Douglas Murray (himself a gay man) observed waspishly about those characters who parade their fetishes in front of families with children at Pride marches: “Pride in what exactly?”
And it is through conversations such as these that the ideological gloop of toxic ‘pride’ positivity, of all lifestyles being equally valid — even the hurtful ones — will be scraped away and we will achieve a mutually tolerant understanding.
Toxic, starring Josh-Susan Enright and Nathaniel J Hall, is set to a poppy Britney Spears soundtrack. It is directed by Scott Le Crass. Playhouse, Sheffield Theatres, Mar 20 & 21, phone for returns, Loading Bay, Bradford2025, Apr 9, £12, Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield, Apr 11, £16, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, Apr 24, £15, plus nationally.
Best of the Rest Mar 15-21
Fellow Bretton Hall graduate Natalie Bellingham has a bit of a cult following when she’s operating as Uncanny Theatre with Matt Rogers. Look After Your Knees is a solo show about grief, parental loss, relationships and getting older. Heavily autobiographical, the show unfolds with warm and physical humour. I suspect part of her audience (women approaching menopause) will howl with delighted self-recognition, whilst another part (their husbands and partners) will be itching to get to the pub. Harrogate Theatre Studio, Mar 18, £14 theatre@41, York, Mar 19, £12 & £15, Civic Theatre, Barnsley, Mar 27, £7 & £13.50.
Set Texts
Readers of John Steinbeck’s 1937 novella Of Mice And Men fall into two categories. Those who did it for GCSE and those who haven’t got round to reading it yet. I can’t say the macho-heavy storyline ever appealed to me. But then I learned that this campaigning novel has fallen foul of woke censorship for, you know, depicting the attitudes and language of its era. So it’s time to express solidarity with the production team at Hull Truck Theatre for not being cowed by idiots. Directed by Sarah Brigham, it’s a solid rendition of a complex novel, brought into the 21st century by having two learning-disabled actors in the role of Lennie, the gentle giant who accompanies his friend George as they travel to California to find work on a ranch. Hull Truck Theatre, to Mar 22, £10-£29.50.
The one I ‘did’ (along with Julius Caesar, Lord of the Flies and The Crucible) was Animal Farm by George Orwell. My Girls Public Day School Trust education certainly tutored me in the uses and abuses of power, and for that I am grateful. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Orwell’s story of animals who take over their farm is a thinly disguised metaphor for the Soviet Revolution, but because human nature is constant it never gets old. Directed by Amy Leach, this lavish Leeds Playhouse and Stratford East co-production in association with Nottingham Playhouse has garnered five-star reviews and an Olivier Award nomination. Oh, and my old friend Everal A Walsh is in it as the porcine philosopher Old Major. Leeds Playhouse, to Mar 29, £15-£47.50, Nottingham Playhouse, Apr 2-12, £14-£40.
Go Greek
Not on the school syllabus, unless you’re studying Classics, are The Bacchae by Euripides and The Frogs by Aristophanes. Many people assume that Greek drama is all tragedy but The Frogs is a comedy. Both revolve around the strange, drunken cult of Dionysus, god of good times and religious ecstacy. Jack Hewitt has adapted them to form one-act dramas performed together over one evening by the same cast. The Lantern Theatre, Sheffield, Mar 18-22, £13-£15
Extinction Matters
I’m not sure where I stand on manmade climate change. We’ve been lied to about so many things — gender, the lab leak, seed oils being good for you — that I’m not prepared accept ‘scientific evidence’ at face value any more. And I lack the mental energy to go down the climate-change rabbithole to see if in this case it stands up. I drive a small car and eschew fast fashion — let that be an end to it. The rest is rampant puritanism (James Lindsay has traced the intellectual lineage) and they’ve just destroyed part of the Amazon rainforest to facilitate a climate-change conference.
But ecological diversity I do care about. Living in the Lower Derwent Valley, a site of international significance for migrating birds, I’m in a position to make a meaningful difference. So my garden is a model exercise in berry bushes, insect-friendly plants, wood piles and No Mow May.
The Sixth Extinction at stage@leeds is “a collaborative design-led performance from MA Performance Design Students that explores the interconnections and interdependencies between people and environments in the context of climate crisis.” I honestly think designers hold the key to this, without rich people telling poor people they can’t have fun any more. So support them if you can. Mar 17-20, pay what you can afford.
And in similar vein, IDP x Complicite: Worn at the Riley Theatre, Leeds, is “a devised piece of physical theatre inspired by the wardrobes of the MA Interdisciplinary Dance Performance students at NSCD and the discarded garments of Leeds.” As someone who bought a pre-loved but immaculate Givenchy cocktail dress on Vestaire Collective for £75, I applaud them. Mar 21 & 22, £12 & £15.
And finally, I know I shouldn’t, I really do know better, but it’s difficult to resist Steve Steinman’s Vampire’s Rock Eternal Love at the Victoria Theatre, Halifax (to Mar 15, £25-£38.75) and CAST, Doncaster, Mar 21 & 22, £19-£37. The ageing Meatloaf wannabe goes full-throttle fronting a sexy and hilarious dance show that’s irresistible to this former rock chick. (Did I ever tell you that when I was 15 I saw Hawkwind at Liverpool Empire? I wasn’t always so prim.) Dress to impress, and check your brain at the door.
That’s it for this week, lovely people. I have an urgent, self-inflicted faulty-passport drama to attend to now, and I need to start calling the obstructive UK Government hotline every 15 minutes to plead with a Hapless Underling.
Liz x
PS Remember that you can book all the shows mentioned by clicking on the purple-highlighted link I provide. And don’t forget to like, comment and share.
As always, Liz, honest, compassionate, and thought-provoking reading.