Young, hot and strapped for cash, Sugar is looking for love in all the wrong places. Skillfully performed and multi-layered, this is confessional cabaret at its very sweetest. Photo Credit: Meagan Harding Bursting with youthful exuberance and a knowing smile, Tomáš Kantor takes to the stage full of attitude and sassy vocals. A self-confessed "genderqueer... Continue Reading →
A coming of age story set in 1990s Belfast, Amanda Verlaque’s autobigraphical play This Sh*t Happens All The Time centres queer love in the face of homophobic bullying. Mixing comedic and touching recollections with an unsettling account of coercive control, this true story highlights underlying threats of violence often faced by the LGBTQ+ community. Photo... Continue Reading →
Celebrating the 150th anniversary of Henry Cyril Paget's birth, How to Win Against History returns to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, in a production that is daring, dazzling and diamante-studded. Photo Credit: Pamela Raith Photography This camp musical romp tells the story of Paget's life, from childhood to becoming the 5th Marquess of Anglesey, and ending... Continue Reading →
A dynamic exploration of faith, sexuality and addiction, Sadiq Ali's The Chosen Haram is a beautiful, affecting piece of physical theatre. Powerful, strong and sensual work that both challenges and entertains. Hauk Pattison and Sadiq Ali. Photo credit: Glen McCarty. Drawing on Ali’s personal experiences, and interviews with members of the LGBTQ+ community who identify... Continue Reading →
“Everything is about sex. Except sex, which is about power”—the quote, apocryphally attributed to Oscar Wilde—sums up much of the machinations at the heart of Neil Blackmore’s brilliant The Dangerous Kingdom of Love, a thrilling retelling of the later years of Francis Bacon’s life with the seductive frisson of Choderlos de Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses... Continue Reading →
The gap between real support and performative allyship—the lurking fear that beneath the flag waving veneer of equality hides something untrustworthy, the thought that when push comes to shove straight people may not really have our backs—is the starting point for Matthew Clark Davison’s debut novel, Doubting Thomas. Thomas is an openly gay fourth grade... Continue Reading →
As writer Russell T. Davies' (Queer As Folk) new 1980s London set drama series It's A Sin opens we're briskly introduced to five young characters, with a skilful immediacy that's instantly involving. Small town boy, 18 year-old Ritchie (Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander), is leaving the sleepy conservative seclusion of the Isle of Wight... Continue Reading →
My boyfriend has been briefed; he’ll be eating alone tonight whilst I scoff Notes On A Conditional Form, a whopping 22 tracks, in the bedroom. He retreats with a wry smile, well-accustomed to these rituals. Listening to The 1975 threatens to conjure my seventeen-year-old self. They’re a band who try on genres like clothes, playfight... Continue Reading →
The 1975's bombastic self-isolation anthem Is it a bird? Is it a plane? The flaming fist of a vengeful deity? Perhaps a fleet of morbidly fascinated aliens back (with space snacks) for the next episode in Earth’s tragic mini-series? Trick question. It’s pop polymorphs, The 1975, digitally descending from the cloud to bless our weary... Continue Reading →
It’s hard to picture Isaac Dunbar, Gen Z’s dazzling alt-pop ascendant, juxtaposed against the quaint promontory of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, but that’s exactly where he is right now, self-isolating in his family’s New England home. For context; I’ve just watched the music video for makeup drawer where every pore of Dunbar shimmers silver and, later, a tiered... Continue Reading →
