“Maybe she was just venting steam over the dawning realisation she’d married a homosexual.”

So runs the tag line for the National Theatre’s new gay themed play, Southwark Fair, directed by Nicholas Hytner with a cast of young, talented actors that’s set in the theatre’s own backyard, the South Bank.

Many of the people who gravitate towards cities are searching for something they can’t quite put a finger on and Southwark Fair is about these complex relationships. But primarily it’s about dealing with the pressures of being - and not being - in a relationship and during the course of the play we get to meet several disparate characters - gay straight and bisexual - all learning to deal with life in the capital.

GaydarNation caught up with actor Rory Kinnear who plays a Simon, a gay character with a particularly colourful past, to find out more.

So what’s the play and your character about?
It’s set around London Bridge in the present day and it’s the story of one day in the lives of seven people, most of whom haven’t met until that day.

My character is called Simon, a 32 year old IT support consultant, and he’s about to meet up with the man he first had sex with when he was fourteen during a summer school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The older man was the director of the play. So it’s really about how their lives have been affected by someone else.

It sounds like there’s a theme of manipulation and abuse?
It’s not that heavy handed in that sense. My character doesn’t feel at the beginning of the play that he has been abused. He remembers the situation as having been pleasant and recalls it as his first love. In his case it’s really about how memory can defy reality and if anything point to how events can affect you later in life.

Is Simon looking forward to seeing the man who made such an impression on him during his youth?
Yes, he thinks that they will have a nice day and a nice chat, that it’ll be a catch up with someone he hasn’t seen for 18 years. This man was someone special in his life. However, the man he is meeting organised the rendezvous thinking Simon was somebody else. When he realises who he really is he thinks Simon might be out for retribution of some kind.

So in one way it reflects how people jump to the wrong conclusions?
Yes and in the case of the man who had sex with my character when he was a teenager it’s about how he deals with this reality, something that he has himself repressed - as he's since got married.

Have all the characters in the play, gay and straight, gone through the emotional mangle with their partners? 
Not all of them, no. There are two gay characters who are set to get ‘married’ that day and although they’re in a strong relationship they are also quite edgy about the big day. One of the guys is much older than the other and the play shows how they deal with the age gap.

Do you think the play will strike a chord with audiences who live in cities and perhaps have themselves struggled with relationships?
Yes, I think that’s very much a point of the play – and it certainly struck a chord with me. When you live in a city everyone’s always after something but they don’t really know what that something is.  You know, people are just keeping on the treadmill so to speak and are not committing themselves to the relationships around them.

It’s the beauty and downside of living in an Aladdin’s cave – there’s too many interesting and exotic people to choose from.
Well, a number of the characters in the play aren’t from London. There’s an Australian, American, an Irishman and a Canadian so the story reflects the melting pot of London and how people are attracted by the bright lights, never quite knowing where they are going or what they are going to do once they get there.

Do you think relationships are more difficult in a city like London than in a small town or the country?
I don’t think it makes a difference in keeping a relationship together, but I think it is in terms of people putting in the effort in the first place. In a city people have more choice and more options. It’s also easier to become distracted in a city so if something isn’t quite right then the option to move on is easier than to actually stop and put the effort in.

One of the themes of the play – about destructive relationships bordering on the abusive – is said by the press blurb to be ‘under explored’ in the gay community. Is this the case any more than in the straight world?
I can’t really comment from a personal perspective as I’m not gay myself. Certainly in the play it’s not saying that the gay characters are tarred with the ‘complicated relationships’ brush. It’s pretty much across the board showing problems with relationships irrespective of sexuality.

I particularly like one of the play’s tag lines: it's about how hard it is to be in a relationship in London and equally how difficult it is not being in a relationship! Do you think it’s a real truism for many people?
Yes, I think it’s pretty much universal no matter whether you’re gay, straight, old or young. It’s difficult to commute and it’s difficult to rub off against each other – and I don’t mean it in that way!

It can seem wonderful when you’re in a relationship that you can expect to be spending Sunday evenings with the same person you enjoy being with, for the rest of your life – doing nothing in particular. But along with that comes other kinds of pressures. Equally when you’re not in a relationship you’ve still got the potential and the hope of being in one. The thing is not to think you’re a failure.

Rory if you ever give up the day job you could become an Agony Aunt…

Read our review of Southwark Fair.

Southwark Fair, by Samuel Adamson
Cottesloe Theatre, National Theatre
South Bank
London, SE1 9PX
020 7452 3000

Opens 16 February 2006 and continues in repertory until 5 April 2006.

Find out more about gay London by buying Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 by Matt Houlbrook. Get it online and save some money to put towards Gay and Lesbian London: The Time Out Guide.