Arts BOOK REVIEW: First Year Out by Sabrina Symington It’s an honest story of the day to day experiences of transition, from the extraordinary to the mundane, depicted with humour, fortitude and intuition. Depicting her experiences from coming out right through to gender reassignment surgery, Lily’s story provides vital candid advice on the social, em By Eric Page • 2 min read
Features & Longread How does PrEP affect our sex lives? Eric Page looks at how PrEP can reduce the chance of infection of HIV, the stigma around using it and finds out from four men how it has affected their lives and the sex they have. PrEP, short for pre-exposure prophylaxis, is two different medications that can substantially reduce the chance of infe By Besi • 9 min read
Arts BOOK REVIEW: Manhood: The Bare Reality by Laura Dodsworth WARNING: This review does contain pictures of penises. It may not be work safe. Be warned. There are no knob puns though. These days we are all less bound by gender and traditional roles, but is there more discussion about what being a man means. From veteran to vicar, from porn addict to prostate By Eric Page • 2 min read
Arts BOOK REVIEW: Black Wave: Michelle Tea Teas’ prose is wonderful, Queer, lusciously Lesbo, darkly Dykey and frothy, filthy and fun. It’s a seriously gripping and evocative tale of Queer women love in all the messy hyper clarity colourful mixed up ways that Tea can tweak and twist her lady loving ideas into. By Eric Page • 2 min read
Arts BOOK REVIEW: Queer City: Peter Ackroyd Ackroyd connects us modern day queers up with our Celtic and Roman forbearers and all the benders, faggots, dykes, trannies, queers, inverts, perverts, queens, Ganymede’s, sappho’s, cross dressers, gender twisters, fops, dandies, genderqueers and utterly baroque non binary beauties (and run of the By Eric Page • 3 min read
Arts BOOK REVIEW: Pages for Her: Sylvia Brownrig This book left me touched and aching to read its predecessor, it shows the development of love and understanding as life moves on and how women learn to accept, empower and inspire the people around them. Pure summer delight! By Eric Page • 2 min read
Arts BRIGHTON FESTIVAL REVIEW: Kneehigh : Tristan & Yseult Kneehigh always get it just right, flavoursome reinvention of tradition and their blend of comedy, music, physical chorography, dance and top notch performers bring a superb energy to the theatre and their take on classic situations allow us an intimate depth of connection with the action sometimes By Eric Page • 3 min read
Arts BRIGHTON FESTIVAL REVIEW: m¡longa: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui To say the dancers were superb is an understatement and some of due and trio dances were astonishing; virtuoso performances of agility, technique and pure scalding sensuality, all contained in a stylised and ruthlessly executed Tango. There were separate stylised dances each shone with a brilliance, By Eric Page • 3 min read
Arts BRIGHTON FRINGE REVIEW: The Late Show: The Warren This is a slightly soiled laid back bear pit of a show with a cuddly chubby grubby panda host Joe Foster, who did as little as he possibly could to keep the atmosphere up and running but then with ten acts on the bill there wasn’t much space for material even if he’d had any. It was refreshing to se By Eric Page • 3 min read
Arts BRIGHTON FRINGE REVIEW: Etherwave: Adventures With The Theremin: Hypnotique This is a curious hybrid of music and education lecture and semi biography of performer Hypnotique who regales us with her personal story about how she came to fall in love with and learn to play the world’s first electronic instrument the Theremin (from 1920s Russia). By Eric Page • 3 min read
Arts BRIGHTON FESTIVAL REVIEW: If I could I would: Mimbre Mimbre don’t challenge; they change and provide a healthy counter narrative to the usual edge-of-danger acrobatics and physical theatre and ‘If I could I would’ allows them to convince us that we’ve all got capacity to fly, have pools of resilience and sometimes you just need two cheeky old ladies a By Eric Page • 2 min read
Arts BRIGHTON FESTIVAL REVIEW: Endings @Old Market Saulwick come across like a retro-modern Madame Blavatsky using the vintage recording machinery and snatches of interviews to express her theosophical investigations, the temporary and temporal mashing up to form the present, the past and gone giving us creative material for the now, the reflection By Eric Page • 4 min read
