Shutters: A Lesbian Rock Opera – Omnibus Theatre, London

Writer, Lyrics, Book: Rena Brannan and The Vindicate Company

Director: Tom Latter

Shutters: A lesbian Rock Opera starts as you think it will go on with a great and hilarious smash of an opera song ‘I am a Lesbian. You are a Lesbian. We are a Lesbian’ that gets the audience immediately laughing and in boisterous spirits.

The lead story is about Saving Liz, played by Morag Sims, an East-End queer working-class woman in 1996 trying to make her way in Rock/Punk. However, unable to find a suitable producer in a patriarchal business and rapidly heading for obscurity, it is suggested to her she collaborates with Country singer Billie, played by Deanna Myers. As soon as she sets eyes upon her, rather too quickly to believe she was ever into rock frankly, she abandons her dream for sex, or maybe love.

This story is set over 20 years with the other two protagonists being the country singer’s best friend suffering from unrequited love, Godwin played by Bunny Cook, and Saving Liz’s Cambridge-educated English upper-class partner played by Sarah Lawrie, who seems to get the best numbers and most fun part to play and she plays it well.

To complicate the narrative there is another story set in Hollywood during and after the Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy years and an effort to get a production off the ground about a Lesbian Rock Opera, that is continually thwarted by the misogyny and homophobia rampant at the time. The two storylines would become baffling if there was not the excellent, charismatic narrator, also Cook, who may not have the best singing voice but who holds this production together.

This storyline relies on numerous memorable dates such as Princess Diana’s death and 9/11 as points to return to the women’s stories over the years and find out where and how these queer lives have twisted and turned out during a time of great change for queer politics in the USA and UK.

Sadly, these lives are not gripping to watch and there is very little chemistry between the characters. It is all rather downbeat. Added to this are often fluffed lines and flat jokes, something about Brixton and Heaven, did they mean to reference the iconic Fridge? Overall, it feels under-rehearsed. Floor-based spotlights aimed up at the audience’s eye level don’t help.

Logically you would expect the Rock Opera music to continue, yet there is only one other in this vein, an excellent F -word number, very much along the lines of the famous one in Jerry Springer the Musical. There is a smattering of Country and Myers has a lovely voice, but Rock/Punk is weirdly non-existent, especially as a rock guitar player is the advertisement for the show. The music is provided by Faith Taylor on keyboards who remains on stage for the whole production and deservedly gets rapturous applause.

The audience, excited by the opening number titter less and less as the production lumbers on for 87 minutes until the first interval, at which time it is extremely unclear where this story is going and what the Hollywood bygone era has to do with anything. Thank goodness, after the break Cook, as narrator, explains the Hollywood plot as a way of looking back at our queer silver screen idols that had to remain in the closet so we didn’t have to

Whilst it’s great to see a diverse queer play during Pride Month, and the good intentions and ideas of this production are clear, it fails to deliver on what it promises on many levels.

Runs until 24 June 2023