Tag Archives: LGBTQ

Writer: Jamie Hale (Not Dying) Directors: Kate O’Donnell (Not Dying), Shereen Hamilton (Showcase) Reviewer: Scott Matthewman Jamie Hale’s health is the focus of their spoken-word piece Not Dying, which forms the first half of the Barbican’s latest Pit Party, evenings of curated art and theatre. Hale’s progressive disability means they are dependent on a 170kg powered wheelchair and hoists. Their ...

Writer: Harvey Fierstein Director: Drew McOnie Reviewer: Richard Maguire Opening the new Turbine Theatre tucked under a railway arch alongside Battersea Power Station is Torch Song, Harvey Fierstein’s new version of his important play Torch Song Trilogy, first seen in New York in 1982. Wordy and long, it’s a bold choice for the Turbine’s first show, but, with the help ...

Director: Jeanie Finlay Reviewer: Richard Maguire The male seahorse has quite a burden to carry. Not only does he have to carry the female’s eggs in a pouch until they hatch, releasing them into the ocean fully developed, but also the seahorse now stands as a symbol for the unpredictability of gender roles in the modern age. Jeanie Finlay’s beautifully ...

Book, Music & Lyrics: Max Vernon Director: Jonathan O’Boyle Reviewer: Heather Deacon Two years after its premiere at New York’s Lynn Redgrave Theater, the self-professed provocative musical, The View Upstairs, finally makes it to London, shaking up the Soho Theatre with a stirring, sensitive score and peerless performances. Based on a true story, the show is rocking if a little ...

Book, Music and Lyrics: Stephen Dolginoff Director:  Matthew Parker Reviewer:  Richard Maguire Thrill Me certainly is thrilling. Based on the real-life case of Leopold and Loeb, the two lovers who killed a boy to prove that they were Nietzschean Supermen, this musical, despite its subject matter, is steamy and sexy. The 1924 murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks has inspired many writers, ...

Writer: Tom Wright Director: Rikki Beadle Blair Reviewer: Scott Matthewman Hot on the heels of their collaboration on Park Theatre’s My Dad’s Gap Year, writer Tom Wright and director Rikki Beadle-Blair once again work together on Undetectable, at the King’s Head. Freddie Hogan and Lewis Brown play Lex and Bradley, a gay couple in their late twenties who, after three months of ...

Writer: Karen Cogan Director: Oonagh Murphy Reviewer: David Keane Brenda has made a few dubious choices. These often involve alcohol and Olivia. Olivia is Brenda’s ex-girlfriend, though Brenda struggles to accept the ‘ex’ prefix, even if it has been years. Rifling through someone else’s recyclable rubbish was never part of the plan, yet here she is. Comforted through the toughest ...

Writer & Performer: Tom Marshman Reviewer: Leah Tozer You may find this morally wrong. I don’t. This is the irreverent, fearlessly truthful, revolutionary reaction of Geoffrey Patrick Williamson, a teenager arrested in Taunton in the fifties after approaching a plain-clothes police officer while travelling on a train. His crime? Existing as a homosexual, and what a haunted existence it was.  A Haunted ...