How did Hot Gay Time Machine come about? Beyonce has a lot to answer for

27 Nov
2018
Posted in: Features Get Social Videos Interviews
Author: Toby Marlow & Zak Ghazi-Torbati
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Hot Gays: Zak Ghazi-Torbati & Toby Marlow

You’d think taking the world by storm with SIX The Musical would have kept writers Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss busy enough as they were finishing up their degrees at Cambridge. But no, along with fellow student Zak Ghazi-Torbati, they were concocting an even more outrageous hit. Toby and Zak, aka The Hot Gays, recount the birth of HOT GAY TIME MACHINE…

The location: the bar of our university’s amdram theatre.
The year: December 2016.
The agenda: drink our weight in pinot.

On that fateful night when we first conceived the beautiful baby that became Hot Gay Time Machine, this was all we had planned. Pinot and a good old-fashioned boogie to Beyoncé Knowles. 

But as everyone knows, when two gay men get drunk together in a room, it’s either gonna result in sex or musical cabaret. So, in the throes of narcissism and our sixth glass of wine, we applied to our university’s theatre committee, saying we wanted to put on some kind of “musical extravaGAYnza” about the two people we find most interesting and inspiring: ourselves.

Despite our application’s many typos and tragic attempts at puns, it was actually very easy to convince them. We just said we’d consider it an act of homophobia if they didn’t give us a slot and - BOOM - we were in!

We patted ourselves on the back, and then promptly forgot to write anything or prepare at all. I mean, to be fair to us, we’re busy. We’re gay. We’ve got brunches to go to.

Anyway, it was only when - a week before we were meant to open – straight(?)-director-Lucy Moss came to the rescue, that we actually sat down and wrote the show together.

We had many a late night sat up eating Dominos pizza and searching the word “cock” on rhymezone.com and, naturally, the result was a highly political, deeply moving piece of performance-art. We spent the entire £400 budget on shimmer curtain, incorporated several totally unnecessary costume changes, and vowed at the end of the run never to be so indulgent as to do the show again. 

Nearly two years later, we’re here in the West End and it’s all a joke that’s gone way too far. We’ve still spent almost the entire budget on shimmer curtain, but at least there are no costume changes for you to endure (though Toby has tried).

In all seriousness though, we are still legitimately dead at the thought that anyone would be interested in coming to our show, let alone spending their hard earned cash on it. So, lastly, we’d just like to say thank you so much for coming and - more importantly - you are so welcome for what we can only assume will have been a life changing event for you. Seriously, don’t mention it.

Could director Lucy get the Hot Gays onto Strictly?

Do the Heathers cast meet the Hot Gay standard?

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