Book and Director: Micha Mirto
Music and Lyrics: Jordan Paul Clarke
Fittingly timed for the official close of Pride Month and the London Pride weekend, Micha Mirto and Jordan Paul Clarke’s new musical Raising Gays received its first-ever public performance with a concert reading at the Garrick Theatre. Featuring five characters, all parents of gay children ranging from 12-30-year olds, this witty and thoughtful early-stage piece looks at all the difficulties of trying to be a caring parent while feeling on the outside of their child’s experience as they navigate everything from repeatedly changing pronouns to serious relationships and being too supportive, as well as the petty tribulations of small-town life in Little Malden.
Wanting to be there for her son when he comes out, Jenny decides she needs a little help and sets up a support group for other parents, and at their first meeting they agree to march together in the local Pride parade in a few months’ time. But all the new members have different problems to manage at home as their children refuse to talk to them, find them embarrassing and discover major discrepancies between their supportive attitude and providing the help they really need.
Designed as a book-musical, Micha Mirto’s script is very funny, helping to build character and depth as the five parents meet to discuss the uncertainty they feel about saying and doing the right thing. But this all takes place in a recognisably petty British scenario as the group meet in a church hall, hastened out by the looming Weight Watchers class encouraging them to leave, and Mirto makes much of this place, far from metropolitan living, that helps to frame the action and the very traditional, ordinary and everyday town that is both exactly what you expect it to be and defying expectation.
And this feels like a collaboration on every front, Mirto’s book and Clarke’s lyrics pointedly in sync. One parent describes her child as “spite, hormones and vengeance,” while another sings of confusion about teaching “the bees and the bees,” as one dad embraces his own extreme wokeness with a dedicated blog that opens a “Queer new world,” and this shared satire runs through the show. There are also big differences between the characters with non-binary and trans identifying offspring, as well as some parents attending the support group alone, offering different family backgrounds, as well as a single parent exploring a burgeoning bisexuality. In fact, as the material develops, it might be interesting to add gay parents having the same difficulties as everyone else.
Performed as a script-in-hand concert accompanied only by Clarke on the piano, an impressive workshop cast of Damian Humbley, Sarah Ingram, Melanie La Barrie, Michael Matus, Joanna Riding and Sydney Sainté absorb their characters, helping the audience to imagine how this show might look when it is fully staged.
Presently, the parents speak to their children and other characters who don’t physically exist in one-sided conversations, so how that will work in a full production is something to take away (calling offstage, using screens or expanding the cast perhaps?), but with unsupportive parents being a feature of LGBTQIA+ stories, Raising Gays gives a voice to the ones who really are full of pride.
Presented on 5 July 2026
