As Is, Steven Webb & David Poynor. Photo: Scott Rylander

William Hoffman wrote As Is in the early 1980s when his friends started dying from AIDS. At the same time cancer struck his close family and he became depressed. The play was his coping mechanism but what lifted him from his depression was humour. Laughter was to prove the more powerful tool and As Is is filled with it despite its subject matter.

It tells the story of Rich (Steven Webb), a writer and runner, who has just left his long term boyfriend Saul (David Poyner) for the young and cute Chet (Giles Cooper). Everything is going well and he is thankful for it until he starts feeling ill and is diagnosed with AIDS.

Hoffman drew on real experiences and conversations among friends, the gay community, AIDS victims and their carers and it is this element of realism that is the soul of this piece. Rich isn't always likeable; fear makes him ugly, petulant, angry and full of self pity. He pushes away those trying to support him and rails against those staying away. You wince and yet feel his pain, the injustice and prejudice of society towards him. Indeed 30 years on it is difficult to comprehend that such prejudice existed but the play keenly replicates the pervasive sense of fear of the time.