Kat Harlton
Photos Provided via Artist / PR Team
Award-winning actor and playwright David John Phillips has brought his acclaimed new play Oh! I Miss the War to the 2025 Toronto Fringe Festival, on until July 13th at Native Earth’s Aki Studio (585 Dundas St E).
Oh! I Miss the War is a love letter to queer elders, a challenge to intergenerational silence, and a sensual, soulful meditation on what it means to live and love across time.
Set in 1967 London and 2022 Toronto, Oh! I Miss the War features two monologues delivered by aging queer men in two very different, but spiritually connected, queer spaces. In London, Jack, a tailor to the chorus boys of the West End, watches the decriminalization of homosexuality unfold around him. As a former rentboy, he reflects on the outlaw joy and danger of queer love in hiding and wonders what’s lost in the era of visibility. In present-day Toronto, Matt, a service bottom with failing knees, navigates the evolving queer landscape of apps, puppies, and pronoun fluency.
Grappling with the disconnect between generations, he claims his space as an elder and leans into the possibilities of intergenerational queer intimacy and political legacy. Together, these stories form a tapestry of queer experience across a century, touching on hankie codes, Polari, tea rooms, back rooms, faeries, drag, kink, love, and grief, all told with sharp wit, theatrical finesse, and emotional depth.
I had the opportunity to chat with David John Phillips about what to expect from the production.
Kat: The play explores two very different eras through characters who are spiritually connected. When you were writing, did one of the voices come to you more clearly first, or did they evolve together in conversation?
David: I didn’t write Jack – the queen from 1967 – at all. Matthew Baldwin wrote I Miss the War as a part of Queers – a collection of monologues that was commissioned by the BBC in 2017 to commemorate the (partial) decriminalization of (some kinds of) sodomy in (parts of) the UK.
I saw the script for Queers at the National Theatre bookstore in London, and of course I had to buy it. When I read Baldwin’s I Miss the War, I fell in love, and had to perform it, which I did at the Glad Day Bookshop in 2023. That was so rich, so evocative, and so much fun that I knew I had to write something to extend and respond to it. So was the monolog Oh! born.
Oh! is quite autobiographical, and the questions it explores were all posed by Jack. I just wrote as honestly as I could about my experiences – of discovering my place in a sexual subculture; of navigating erotics in a battlefield; of wondering what the young queens I now see around me are thinking and desiring; of eschewing the normal.
At first, I performed both monologs back to back. But then Tony Misiano, a wonderful director with whom I had just worked in New York, suggested that we interleave them, and let them really speak to and build upon each other. That structure works beautifully. The pieces actually resonate far more than even I thought they did.
Kat: “Outlaw joy” is such a powerful phrase in the context of queer history. How do you personally define that idea, and how did it shape the emotional landscape of Jack’s story?
David: I love it when Jack says, of the times before decriminalization, “I knew exactly where I stood.” And I love it when Matt realizes that he is not considered part of the “general population” and embraces just where he stands – that is, outside. I personally feel that that place apart is such a gift, such a freedom. That is why I was so pleased when a generation younger than mine embraced the term “queer.”
Like Jack, I was quite ambivalent when gay rights organizations targeted marriage and military service as goals in the struggle for equality. I mean, it makes sense, yeah. It’s blatant discrimination, but is equality really what we want? It irks and frightens Jack that the rentboys are going to want to get married, for God’s sake. Where’s the fun in that?
I shared his concerns about creeping normativity until I performed I Miss the War at Glad Day. Interacting with the staff and the customers and the hangers-on there was a hoot. I realized we are delightfully, unclassifiably, queer, and the celebration of that informed my writing of Oh!
Kat: There’s often a romanticization of past eras and a discomfort with queer generational gaps today. What responsibilities, if any, do you feel contemporary queer art has in bridging that space?
David: Two things. The first is honesty. Honesty especially with your doubts. A little humility. Joni Mitchell is my muse. Her ability to explore and articulate and still maintain a fundamental uncertainty is something I tried very hard to emulate. Matthew Baldwin was tremendously helpful when he responded to an early draft of Oh! by saying that the more specific and honest I could be, the more universal and moving it would be.
I’ve also discovered a certain responsibility to be an elder. I just turned 70 a few weeks ago. I have financial and emotional resources. I have a certain stability. I have history. I don’t nearly give a shit like I used to. I’m realizing that this is not just hoo-ha. It’s real and it’s valuable. There is a value in continuing to be present in an evolving community.
And I guess there’s a third thing – respect for the work that younger people are doing all the time.
Something about this show works and reaches young queers. I’ve held then sobbing in my arms after the show. I think it’s the welcome, the appreciation, and the pointing to a past – a history – that they are absolutely a part of creating.
Kat: You blend kink, grief, love, and political legacy with sensuality and humor. How do you navigate tone when writing — especially when layering intimacy with sharp social critique?
David: Hmmm… I’m not really sure. I do know that any time I hear Matt getting polemic I try to lighten the fuck up immediately. And I guess that’s why camp is such a pleasure – renaming the police “Lily Law,” pointing out that their yellow hazmat gloves don’t match their jackboots, making dirndl skirts in a military camouflage pattern.
Kat: Polari, hankie codes, and tea rooms aren’t just cultural references, they’re languages of survival and belonging. Was there a piece of this encoded history that surprised or moved you most during your research or writing?
David: One thing that surprised me was that many of the codes I thought were still current are actually archaic. I thought any queen would be able to decipher hunter green and teal hankies hanging right. But no. Sigh.
And I had never heard of Polari until I read I Miss the War! Really, I felt like a bad homo. As I learned more, I realized that much of the slang I used coming out – “AC/DC” for bisexual, “chicken” for twink – were from Polari, and were now defunct.
Connect:
Fringe Festival Website & Tickets
David John Phillips On Instagram