Jacob Sparrow's 'Sanctuary' Debuts at Edinburgh Fringe
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- Jacob Sparrow's debut two-hander 'Sanctuary' — about two gay men confronting HIV/Aids in the 1990s — runs at Edinburgh's Pleasance Dome until 31 August.
- The play's setup draws on the real-life public furore over plans to build an Aids hospice in a Suffolk village, where residents feared their cows could be contaminated by people with HIV.
- Matthew Tennyson plays Michael, a young HIV-positive character, opposite Richard Cant as an older, unnamed man who says he is happily living with his partner.
- Josh Seymour directs, with both actors delivering 'delicately emotional' performances that become 'deeply moving' as Michael recounts his diagnosis and the friends he has lost.
- The review praises Sparrow's 'lovely, lyrical passages' but flags predictable plot twists and a warm ending it calls tonally at odds with the moment of prejudice depicted.
- The Edinburgh run coincides with a revival of Tony Kushner's 'Angels in America' — another Aids-era epic — at the Edinburgh international festival.
Why it matters: A debut playwright tackling Aids-era subject matter earns a profile-boosting review at the world's largest fringe festival, programmed in the same Edinburgh season as a major revival of Tony Kushner's 'Angels in America.' The mixed verdict — lyricism praised, plotting faulted — gives producers concrete steer on whether the two-hander can travel beyond its Pleasance Dome run.
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