With so many queer spaces, bars, clubs, live venues, theatres, and cinemas closed for much of the year, and festivals cancelled or reimagined as virtual editions, we asked some of friends, including prominent culture makers and performers, to tell us their favourite LGBTQ+ art or events of 2020. Get in touch via social media using... Continue Reading →
Film Review: The Prom ★★★★
While Broadway remains dark after more than nine months, with the help of a little movie magic and an impressively detailed set (production design by Jamie Walker McCall), The Prom, lights up 42nd street once more and delivers a joyous, thoroughly uplifting movie musical where the dialogue scenes pop just as much as the song... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Interview: Tony-nominated The Boys in the Band star Robin de Jesús “being a part of this cast really helped me find that pride & that gay ancestral power to step into”
Robin de Jesús received both critical acclaim and his third Tony nomination for his show stealing, hilarious yet soulful, performance as the fabulously flamboyant Emory in the Ryan Murphy produced 2018 Tony-winning Broadway revival of Mart Crowley's groundbreaking play The Boys in the Band. He's now reprising that role, alongside his all-star, all publicly gay... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Interview: Drew Droege on his new one man show Happy Birthday Doug “I think we’re afraid as queer people to write flawed gay characters”
The Groundlings and Upright Citizens Brigade alum Drew Droege is a much-beloved fixture of Los Angeles' comedy theatre scene. Outside of LA he's best known for setting the Internet alight with his hilarious Chloë Sevigny videos, which give Schitt's Creek Moira Rose a run for her money on how to pronounce the simplest of words... Continue Reading →
Theatre Review: V&V (Vault Festival, London) ★★★1/2
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? When you go to see a play about the famed writer you really don't expect to be laughing at bad sexting and awkward nudes! V&V, an entertaining new two-hander currently playing at The Vaults in London, juxtaposes the literary love affair of Woolf and socialite Vita Sackville-West with the modern... Continue Reading →
Theatre Review: Coop (Paradise Factory, New York) ★★★★
Developed as a part of Pipeline Theatre Company’s PlayLab, non-binary writer and director Sam Max's darkly comic Coop opens Off-Off-Broadway tonight at Paradise Factory in the East Village. Produced by a queer and femme led creative team, the play stars Latinx, transmasculine actor Lio Mehiel as Avery, a girl who has been isolated from the... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Interview: Composer Paul Englishby on his music for The Inheritance “my feeling was that the music should gently put it’s arm around the audience”
With Matthew Lopez's multi-Olivier winning The Inheritance now in its final weeks on Broadway The Queer Review's editor James Kleinmann spoke exclusively with composer Paul Englishby about creating the play's achingly beautiful music. Scoring for theatre, film, television, dance and opera, Englishby is perhaps best known for his BAFTA-nominated work on BBC's Luther starring Idris Elba. His jazz inflected... Continue Reading →
Theatre Review: Coming Clean (Trafalgar Studios, London) ★★★1/2
Kevin Elyot’s debut play, Coming Clean, is back as the King's Head Theatre’s production returns to London’s West End. In pre-AIDS 80s Thatcherite Britain a gay couple Tony (Lee Knight) and Greg (Stanton Plummer-Cambridge) feel out the boundaries of their long-term relationship. Enter a young, sexy cleaner named Robert (Jonah Rzeskiewicz) who puts things to... Continue Reading →
Theatre Review: The Inheritance (Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York) ★★★★★
Matthew Lopez’s Best Play Olivier award-winning The Inheritance, directed by Stephen Daldry, has arrived on Broadway following last year’s highly acclaimed production at London’s Young Vic and its West End transfer, with many of the original cast. Inspired by E. M. Forster’s novel Howards End, the epic two-part play examines multigenerational gay life in New... Continue Reading →
Some personal thoughts on The Inheritance
One may as well start with the Young Vic’s emails to its mailing list (my God, how many articles about The Inheritance have started with variations on that line). Back in 2017 when Angels In America (starring Nathan Lane and Andrew Garfield) was playing at the National Theatre, the Young Vic was announcing the last... Continue Reading →