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Love & Sex on the Spectrum

COMEDY


Love & Sex on the Spectrum

Bar 50

Within A&O Edinburgh City Hostel, 50 Blackfriars Street
The Garden Room: AUG 4-19 at 13:45 (60 min) - Free & Unticketed

Love & Sex on the Spectrum

An atypical romantic comedy, that explores all of the awkward firsts that come with dating, sex and love from a late bloomer’s perspective. Being on the autism spectrum is challenging enough, now add dating to the mix. There’s quite a learning curve. Experience all the lessons and laughs, along with the do’s and don’ts, on how to be your most authentic self, and to truly love yourself at the end of the day.

This year we have two entry methods: Free & Unticketed or Pay What You Can
Free & Unticketed: Entry to a show is first-come, first served at the venue - just turn up and then donate to the show in the collection at the end.
Pay What You Can: For these shows you can book a ticket to guarantee entry and choose your price from the Fringe Box Office, up to 30 mins before a show. After that all remaining space is free at the venue on a first-come, first-served bases. Donations for walk-ins at the end of the show.


News and Reviews for this Show

August 7, 2022    Broadway Baby

It’s four years since George Steeves brought his Magic 8 Ball show to Edinburgh, winning the heart and mind of at least this reviewer with such an honest, bold theatrical collage of spoken word and song narrating George’s somewhat confusing childhood and early adulthood as someone with Asperger’s. Love and Sex on the Spectrum is, in some respects, a sequel, given it continues with the previous show’s near-final big reveal that he’s actually gay.

In form, though, this new show is quite different; not so much theatre as stand-up, with George re-moulding his material to fit the small rectangle of the room’s “stage”, while holding onto a microphone as his only prop. And you know what? For someone best known as an actor and singer, he’s remarkably good at it: there’s a real sense of energy in the room as he shares the often humorous, always authentic, ups and downs of his sudden flowering as a sexual being with a smartphone and a clear desire to catch up for lost time. (Swipe left!)

Many people with Asperger’s are “late bloomers”, he tells us: George is honest in describing himself as both asexual (and desperate to be straight) for the first 27 years of his life. So the heart of this show is partly about how that – remarkably quickly – changed, and how trying to find “the one” for a longterm relationship can prove to be a particularly dangerous addiction for someone “on the Spectrum”, for whom restrictive repetitive actions are quite a thing. Even though, for a time, he thought he was “so picky” when it came to potential partners’ age, height and hygiene.

At the top of the show, George apologies for all the American references he’s going to use. Thankfully, the likes of Justin Timberlake, Sex and the City and Glee are sufficiently well-travelled not to require too much translation: that said, various 1990s horror film references may be more challenging for some. In any case, despite some necessarily US-based specifics, George’s story is surprisingly universal; and one delivered with heart, skill and engaging honesty. Click Here For Review