Jerker

Getting the chance to revisit a play after a number of years is always a fascinating prospect, particularly when there’s a new creative team delivering their take on this intense two-hander, Jerker (pun semi-intended). It’s a milestone year for Robert Chesley’s play, it being four decades since its July 1986 debut at Los Angeles’s Celebration Theatre. Having reviewed the play during a UK run at the King’s Head Theatre seven years ago - I noted it was a "resonant reminder of a devastating period in queer history" – an observation that obviously still holds true today with this new production, being staged at the Waterloo East Theatre under the direction of Henry Adams who brings Paul Dennison (J.R.) and James Lee (Bert) together to breathe new life into Chesley's enduring work.

The set design—credited to Waterloo East Theatre—effectively splits the stage into two distinct apartments, instantly highlighting the separate lives J.R. and Bert lead despite being brought together by a series of late-night phone calls, and whilst we get to follow an intense and intimate journey of sex, seduction, and roleplay (more intimate than some of the audience members might have been prepared for), neither J.R. or Bert shows much interest in meeting each other in the flesh, the fantasies they engage in during the phone calls being enough to fulfil any need either might have otherwise felt to replicate their encounters face to face. Instead, the relationship they embark on is conducted both anonymously and entirely by phone.

Context is everything here as the play remains set in 1986 and, as such, both smartphones and the now ubiquitous internet are still several decades away. There are no dating apps, no Facetime video calls, no porn sites, meaning guys that found themselves home alone and feeling horny found phone sex a way to fulfil a need where, instead of sending pictures or streaming video, these audio-only interactions would instead be conducted through graphic word play and a reliance on a vivid imagination to fill in the visuals as every desire and every intimate gesture is described in stark detail by one to the other. The only downside in this reciprocal arrangement come’s when the calls remain unanswered, J.R. finding himself increasingly frustrated when left with only Bert’s answer phone message for company, a mere inconvenience at first, but Bert’s absence becomes more relevant as the play continues, a situation that elevates both Chesley’s writing and the director and the actor’s more sensitive handling of the material.

This development feels a long time coming in the overall arc of the play however, as to get there is a somewhat relentless journey through lust, desire, fantasy and self-pleasure almost from the moment Dennison walks on stage, the action of ‘Jerker’ being ‘exactly what it says on the tin’, Adams’s bold direction leaving little to the imagination: the audience seeing both sides of the phone call’s unfolding simultaneously, even if the characters themselves cannot see each other. Naked, alone, and secure within their own familiar surroundings, the confident couple’s vulnerabilities are only ever truly exposed when flashes of honesty begin to weave its way into their concocted fantasies, their reluctance to get emotionally involved being something that slowly starts to change when genuine feelings begin to infiltrate the increasingly wild fantasies. Given that it is here that the play finds itself being at its most powerful, the set-up certainly feels a bit drawn out, but instead of feeling gratuitously graphic, it strangely becomes a bit ‘one-note’ by dint of it’s repetition whilst waiting for the narrative to shift gears, which it thankfully does to great effect in the second half.

Both Dennison and Lee deliver committed performances in their roles, no small feat considering they remain undressed for the majority of the plays 90-minute duration, self-pleasuring themselves through the frequent and increasingly intense phone calls, made all the more impressive by the fact that this is James Lee’s professional stage debut. One I am sure he won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

As much as Jerker starts off as a celebration of the sexual liberation that followed years of discrimination, it is also a stark reminder of the devastating virus that ripped through the gay community with the arrival of HIV and AIDS which, in 1986 was rapidly escalating with over 18,000 cases having been reported in the United States alone. Living in San Francisco, J.R. and Bert find that phone sex offers a safe sanctuary, yet they cannot remain immune to the reality surrounding them as they watch friends begin to succumb to symptoms for which there was no known cure at the time. It’s a reality that becomes increasingly difficult to ignore and the thrill of their fantasy role playing eventually gives way to a more desperate need for genuine human connection - leaving only the question of whether they have waited too late to admit to themselves, and each other, how they truly feel.

★ ★ ★ ★

Jerker is on at the Waterloo East Theatre - 26th September - 18th October 2026. Tickets available here

review: Simon J. Webb