There’s something electric about reconnecting with a theatre-maker whose work refuses to play it safe. When I sat down again with Alexis Gregory to talk about the upcoming tour of SMOKE, his bold exploration of grief, psychosis, and drug use in the queer community, I could hear the exhaustion and excitement in his voice. “I just exhaled then as you were saying that,” he told me. “We’ve been doing about a year’s work behind the scenes, pre-funding, putting this whole tour together.”
Alexis and I last caught up in 2024 when SMOKE was about to open at the Kings Head Theatre and the show has been on a huge journey since then.
The last year of work has paid off. SMOKE is heading out on a 10-date UK tour from April through June, and it’s bringing something radical with it, a partnership with LGBTQ+ organisation You Are Loved that transforms each performance into a two-part experience.
What struck me most about our conversation was how Alexis approached the tour with both ambition and uncertainty. “I didn’t know how responsive they would be once you tell them what the subject matter is,” he admitted. “It’s a solo show about post-truth and psychosis and grief and the endless announcements of another gay man dying that you see on your phone, while still being a comedy.”
It’s a tough sell on paper, but the response has been overwhelming. I said, maybe we’ll get three or four bookings, I can’t guarantee it, but we’ve got 10.”
Those 10 venues represent a real mixture, from major regional houses like Nottingham Playhouse and the Lowry to grassroots community spaces like Arc in Margate and Ironworks in Brighton. It’s the kind of tour that meets audiences where they are, rather than expecting them to come to London.
A two-part experience
The partnership with You Are Loved adds something special to each performance. After the 60-minute show and a 10-minute interval, audiences get a 45-minute panel discussion featuring local LGBTQIA+ voices. “We’re really offering audiences a two-part event, both of them lean into each other,” Alexis explained. “And to be brutal, it’s quite economical as well for audiences. It’s not expensive, you are getting a two-hour event, it’s well-priced, and we’re just trying to give audiences and communities around the country as much as possible, really.”
Mark at You Are Loved is curating these panels with around four guests each night, people who work in the LGBTQ+ community, writers, authors, performers, and people with their own personal stories to tell. The themes of the play, premature death, suicide, drug misuse, bereavement, mental health, will be explored through local perspectives, creating space for conversations that often don’t happen in public forums.
Raw, real, and relatable
What makes SMOKE so distinctive is its approach to storytelling. This isn’t theatre with a protective frame. The lights stay up throughout most of the performance, exposing both performer and audience together. “I often want it to feel like they were about to see a play or a show, and then this guy has walked in and just started telling you about his life, and he’s kind of halted the show,” Alexis told me.
The play begins with a glitch in reality, Alex receives an Instagram DM from his boyfriend who has been dead for two years. It’s immediately relatable in our hack-prone digital age. “So many of us have been hacked, or we know someone who’s been hacked, or we see someone post on social media, I’ve been hacked, don’t click on any links,” Alexis said. “So again, that’s a very everyday thing that happens, and it places the reality of the situation right in front of the audience.”
But the play goes much deeper than a simple hack. “I have had messages from accounts of, in this case, gay guys who have passed away, and I don’t know whether it’s a glitch or somebody has got in, but I remember receiving a couple of these messages and thinking, oh my goodness, imagine if that was my partner, for example, how upsetting would it be to get a fake message from that account?”
Breaking new ground
What fascinated me most was how Alexis positions SMOKE within the landscape of queer theatre. “I think that quite often with queer narratives, only certain ones are allowed to come to the forefront,” he explained. “And even when they’re sometimes challenging ones, for example, about chemsex or sex working, for example, those are the challenging ones that are allowed. But what are the other ones that I’m giving myself permission to tell?”
SMOKE explores territory that rarely gets examined on stage, drug psychosis in the modern age, when you’re filming your breakdown and sharing it online, linking that into modern conspiracy theories and post-truth culture. “We live in this post-truth age. So I’ve never seen the linking of that with drug psychosis through a queer lens, looking at modern life via your phone. And as I say, all of that while still being a comedy.”
The character of Alex, deliberately named close to Alexis, is what he calls “a bad gay.” But audiences still seem to like him. “I don’t think queer characters have to be likable,” Alexis said. “And again, there’s no middle ground with that. You’re either very nice, safe queer character, or you’re a gay serial killer. There’s no middle ground of someone who’s actually really flawed, who’s got into addiction and has just treated the people around him so badly.”
Opening up difficult conversations
The play tackles subjects that are often shrouded in silence, even within queer spaces. “I’m very interested in drugs in the queer community as well, because that’s been happening as far as I’m aware in the queer community since maybe the 1960s, possibly before,” Alexis told me. “And drugs are so inherent in queer culture, but we don’t really see them explored unless it’s via the chemsex lens. That’s the only way that we’re allowed to talk about it in public forums often. And I think it’s much more complex than that.”
SMOKE is also about repressed trauma and the grooming of young queer people by predators who view vulnerability as a tool to exploit. These are conversations that need to happen, and the post-show panels create space for them to unfold in each community the tour visits.
Meeting communities across the UK
When we last spoke, Alexis was passionate about reaching audiences beyond London, and this tour delivers on that promise. While the tour hits major queer cities like Manchester and Brighton, it also ventures to places like Norwich, Poole, and Hull, places where queer communities exist but don’t always get to see work like this.
“I’ve worked in Norwich twice, and I love it. It’s very queer-centric, and sometimes I say that to people, and they’re like, surely there’s only one gay in the village, and I’m like, no, no, no, there’s more than one,” Alexis laughed. He also mentioned Bournemouth’s LGBTQ+ recovery community, which makes the Lighthouse Poole date particularly meaningful.
A unique night out
What comes through in every moment of our conversation is Alexis’s commitment to truthfulness in his work. “I think it’s just kind of being as truthful as I can with the work and the plays that I want to create and the conversations I want to have,” he reflected. “And you never know how they’re going to land.”
SMOKE is a thriller set in familiar spaces, your local Starbucks, the 24-hour shop with cameras everywhere. It unfolds in real time, with Alexis often standing just a foot away from the audience, bouncing off them as another character in the story. “Some people said it’s my best play, which I’m really pleased,” he told me. “I mean, I’ve been acting for 300 years, and I think the best acting I’ve ever done. I’ve never acted a character like this.”
It’s bold, it’s raw, and it’s unlike anything else you’ll see on stage this year. As Alexis put it: “I think it’s a unique night out.”
Tour dates
SMOKE tours the UK from 21st April – 20th June 2026. Each performance includes a 45-minute post-show panel with You Are Loved featuring local LGBTQIA+ voices.
21st – 25th April 2026
Omnibus Theatre, London
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28th April 2026
White Rock Theatre, Hastings (Co-presented by Giddy Up)
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30th April 2026
Ironworks Studios, Brighton
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9th May 2026
Norwich Theatre Royal (Stage Two)
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12th May 2026
The Wardrobe Theatre, Bristol (Co-presented by Bristol Pride)
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14th May 2026
ARK, Margate
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21st May 2026
Lowry, Salford
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4th June 2026
Hull Truck Theatre
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12th June 2026
Lighthouse, Poole
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20th June 2026
Nottingham Playhouse
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Running time: 60 minutes, followed by a 10-minute interval and a 45-minute panel discussion.
Suitable for 16+. Contains references to homophobic assault, drug misuse, sexual abuse and grooming, grief, mental health issues, psychosis, stalking, and suicide.
For more information, visit alexisgregory.co.uk