Ben Powell
(a play in a) DARK ROOM is a one-person, deep dive into dark room culture, LGBTQ+ discrimination and the nature of taboo.
Written and performed by Noah Alfred Pantano, this production challenges its audience to consider the reality of life after one has come out and the glorious mess of complication that living truly and authentically can be. In previous work, Pup Play, Pantano wrote ‘If you are queer, you put yourself in danger, knowingly or not. You will at some point be presented with the choice to be yourself in spite of that fear or to run back into the closet. Neither choice makes you safe but one frees you.’
DARK ROOM gets into the nitty gritty of that choice, and the risks associated. Davis (Pantano) is a self-declared ‘pig’, who volunteers to clean the dark room of his friend’s queer club. Following a violent incident, we follow Davis’ descent into fear, caught between fight and flight, as he confronts the aftereffects of the incident and tries to find his whole self again.
The production, performed at Colchester Arts Centre, is a technical triumph – lighting, projection, sound all serving the chief goal of carrying us through Davis’ erratic states of mind and recreating the all too appealing anonymity of the dark room. The use of torches throughout is smart and, though I do feel there’s too much liquid and wonder if the use of it strays too close to visual shock over effectivity, the various slimes and goos add a fantastic viscerality to proceedings.
Pantano delivers a solid performance, flitting between the two speaking roles with confidence. I appreciate the heavy-hitting nature of the content and, particularly, given the semi-autobiographical nature of some of the script, the production is impressively raw. I felt that, on occasion, we veer slightly too close to ‘trauma porn’ but Pantano’s writing is careful and clever and steers us back from this precipice so we maintain a fine balance between the mental state of Davis and the confusion between reality and a fear-fuelled spiralling imagination.
I particularly enjoyed moments early in the show when he, as Davis, challenges the audience over their response to a ‘piss pool’. “They’re just fluids. With enough cleaning they go away. Sure, they’re gross but it’s only temporary.” And, later, “Sure it’s gross, but it’s not wrong.”
These lines, for me, demonstrates the strongest part of this show – the humanity. When we strip away the pool and buckets, the drama and the tech, we’re left with a few simple questions. Why does what I enjoy bother you? Why are you more disgusted by how I have sex than how others may abuse me for it? And why should I care what you think either way?
Pantano states, in an interview, that ‘messiness is important to queer theatre’ and that questions such as these must be explored with ‘messy nuance’, and I think DARK ROOM is a great celebration of that attitude.
Recommended Drink: Reader’s choice. It’s all going to end up in the pool anyway.
Performances of (a play in a) DARK ROOM have now concluded at Colchester Fringe 2026.
Shay Mace
