Jerker gets its UK premiere at Waterloo East Theatre this autumn

A landmark of queer AIDS-era theatre gets its UK premiere at Waterloo East this autumn

Robert Chesley's Jerker was written in 1986 and premièred in San Francisco in 1986. It has been produced extensively in the United States and cited as one of the most important plays to emerge from the AIDS crisis. It has never had a professional UK production until now.

The play follows two men who connect through a series of late-night phone calls. What begins as anonymous sexual fantasy deepens into something else: secrets, fears, longing, and the slowly emerging shapes of two actual human beings behind the voices. Every call goes further. The intimacy that builds between them is both erotic and unexpected, and the play holds both registers without flinching from either.

Produced by the team behind F**king Men, Afterglow and Happy Ending, this is a production from a company with a track record in staging queer work that does not soften its edges. Two performers. No set to speak of. Just voices and imagination and the accumulating weight of what is said and not said across a series of phone calls.

The play contains strong descriptive language of a sexual nature and nudity.

Waterloo East Theatre, Brad Street, SE1 8TN. 26 September to 18 October 2026.

Tickets at waterlooeast.co.uk