Once upon a time in a faraway land called the 1990s, there lived a young gay man who had been transformed into a hideous Beast by a powerful spell.
Locked away in his hideaway with only an extremely talkative Magic Mirror for company, he is forced to confront the record of his relationship dramas in a quest for clues that might help break the enchantment.
And thus begins a journey of self-discovery that summons up boyfriends and breakups, some of London’s lost queer spaces from the era, and the house sounds that defined a decade.
This autobiographical show combines a queer re-telling of Beauty and the Beast with a revisionist take on the 1990s to create a kind of solo panto that invites a whole new level of audience participation.
No Beauty, Just The Beast is the latest work by writer-performer Martin Moriarty (Virginia Woolf’s Dog Training Academy, CPT, 2024) and director Sean Ting-Hsuan Wang (NO I.D., Vaults Festival / Royal Court Upstairs, 2023).
"Hats off to the CPT for this fine show, well researched and coming from a place of great passion... Community theatre at its most effective."
Camden New Journal (Human Jam)
