A play about two nine-year-old boys kissing shouldn’t exist.
Not because there’s anything wrong with the kiss — but because it shouldn’t be remarkable enough for anyone to care.
And yet, in 2026, The Boys Are Kissing feels more necessary than it should.
Zak Zarafshan’s play turns one tiny act into an examination of everything adults project onto it: sexuality, parenting, tolerance, prejudice and, perhaps most interestingly, our certainty in our own goodness.
Because being moral is easy when it demands nothing of us. It gets much harder when our values are actually tested — and the more convinced we become that we’re the good person in the room, the harder it can become to recognise the harm we’re causing.
Gavin Roach’s production at Qtopia Sydney handles the play’s shifts between seriousness and glorious absurdity beautifully, with Max Fernandez and Aisling Delahunt’s queer guardian angels providing far more than comic relief. Alongside a strong ensemble — particularly Willa King — they make the absurdity funny without ever allowing us to forget that its consequences are real.
The Boys Are Kissing sometimes reaches for more ideas than it has space to fully explore. But its simplest idea lands hardest:
Two boys kissing shouldn’t be remarkable.
Everything the adults reveal about themselves because of it is.