Sublime theatre is rare and in the case of David Hendon’s masterful and totally absorbing look at the way the American media can destroy someone’s life after an extraordinary act of bravery, is both brutal in its honesty and powerful.
His play tells the story of Oliver Sipple who stopped Gerald Ford, the American President in 1975, being assassinated. Sipple even got a hand-written note from Ford thanking him for his courage.
It was the fact that he was gay that in 1975 would sell more newspapers – outing him to his family. Sipple then via a lawyer sued and after a nine year legal battle lost his fight for invasion of privacy.
Hendon exams the value that society and the American media put on a human being.
The play looks at how someone who is proud to be an American, enlisting in the army only to be sent to Vietnam, even though that was to get out of feeling trapped in his home city of Detroit, and stop him ending up like his father.
Jackson Pentland as the eponymous hero Sipple delivers a 60 minute monologue that clearly demonstrates the ‘sink or swim’ attitude of working-class Americans; who because of what happens to him can only find solace in getting to the bottom of a bottle of bourbon on a nightly basis.
This is also a story about a man coming to terms with his dyslexia, even though at the time of him going to school it was undiagnosed and then subsequent bullying right through his teens before joining the army. His coming to terms with his sexuality and enjoying that sexual freedom in the pre-AIDS period of San Francisco, only to be harangued for it by lovers and his family.
This is beautiful theatre and deserves to be seen by a much wider audience. A huge bravo for all concerned. Stunning in its simplicity.
****
The Last Song of Oliver Sipple was reviewed on Sunday 14th July at the King’s Head Theatre, part of their 2019 Queer Season which is running to the 24th August. Box office 020 7226 8561 www.kingsheadtheatre.com
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