Arts OPERA REVIEW: The Gospel According to the Other Mary This is something new, modern but accessible, understandable and moving. I would highly recommend this engaging production by the ENO, and if the music bores you a little, you can always float away with Banks and his vibrant, rhythmic angelic crumping or allow the chorus to astonish you. By Eric Page • 5 min read
Arts BOOK REVIEW: Red Hot 100 Three years ago Thomas Knights had an idea – to put ginger guys in the spotlight like never seen before. To show them as desirable, as alpha males. Sexual, confident, Heroic, as the ultimate male. By Eric Page • 2 min read
Arts BOOK REVIEW: Camp Carnage Every now and again a book drops into my slot with perfect timing and I got this one for Halloween. Local boy Joshua Winning and his co-author Elliot Cross have conspired on this book based in a 1980s American summer camp where gay teens are sent to be straightened out but- as is the gore-norm for s By Eric Page • 3 min read
Arts MUSIC REVIEW: Peter and the Wolf: Chamberhouse Winds Chamberhouse Winds are a fun local group of professional orchestral woodwind players with a nice line in millinery who also know how to engage and hold the attention of young children for an hour or so and provide and entertaining and unusual performance for their parents too. By Eric Page • 2 min read
Arts OPERA REVIEW: La Bohème This is the third outing for Millers La Boheme and it’s developing in to a fine vintage, full of flavour and body. Under revival director Natasha Metherell we experienced one of opera’s greatest love stories, tracing the doomed relationship between the impoverished poet Rodolfo and his seamstress gi By Eric Page • 3 min read
Arts BOOK REVIEW: Out There In the year that Scotland voted to not choose independence from the rest of the UK and kicked off a greater debate about the Union and what it is, and what it means to the rest of us in the UK, Freight Books brings a new and definitive anthology of poetry and prose writing from Scotland’s leading an By Eric Page • 3 min read
Arts BOOK REVIEW: Dear Infidel: Tamim Sadikali Dear Infidel is evocative of the frustrations and challenges faced by British Muslims as the gravity of world politics has a domino effect on their own lives. With the news full of young British men going off to fight in a war and for a reason that many find unfathomable this is a well-timed book on By Eric Page • 3 min read
Arts BOOK REVIEW: The Queen of Clubs: Tobias International This is at heart a book balanced on suspense and if you’ve always wondered quote how much of that makeup, attitude and viciousness is left behind in the dressing rooms of Drag Queens then you will enjoy the rising tensions as these Drag Queens clash and wrestle and worse, and be taken up with the ne By Eric Page • 2 min read
Arts REVIEW: Marriage of Figaro This second outing of Fiona Shaw’s Figaro has mellowed and matured in the few years since the last time it graced the ENO stage. The wit is still there, the endless movement and r revolving stage allowing us insight and side squints into the upstairs/downstairs business of this grand space and the s By Eric Page • 4 min read
Arts REVIEW: Best of the Fest The Best of the Fest night always highlights the best stand up comedians who are appearing in the Brighton Comedy Festival. LAST NIGHT’S SHOW, MC´d by Andrew Maxwell in his very ”Orish” way was full of his usual slightly twisted observations about being an Irish man in England and his merciless dire By Eric Page • 2 min read
Arts PREVIEW: Brighton Comedy Festival The Brighton comedy festival offers the widest range of stand up and performance comedy outside of the Edinburgh festival with the very best up and coming acts, there’s plenty of choice. By Eric Page • 3 min read
Arts THEATRE PREVIEW: Peter and the Wolf: Dome Studio Chamber House Winds along with narrator Jonathan Butcher introduce us to Prokofiev’s classic composition and the wind family of instruments – with the help of a very long hosepipe and some rather fetching headpieces By Eric Page • 1 min read
