Arts BOOK REVIEW: Natalie and Romaine by Diana Souhami Souhami’s eye for detail and her enormously kind and generous emotional insight gives us not just the facts of their existence, but the feeling, yearning, passions and desires of two perfectly fascinating and indomitable women with the world at their feet. It’s a hugely positive and fun depiction of By Eric Page • 2 min read
Arts Music Review: Talma are casting you Out to sea with nothing but a paddle Welcome to the stormy voyage through rock band Talma’s debut E.P. Out to sea. You’re in the middle of the sea. Empty horizons surrounding you. Brisk biting winds encapsulate the air-from every direction they’re pulling at your hair, snatching at your skin as the freezing ocean slowly laps up the sid By Ray A-J • 5 min read
Arts REVIEW: The Seven Doors of Danny @Phil Starr Pavilion This morality tale in words and music performed as part of B RIGHT ON LGBT Community Festival first saw the light of day as a concert item and it has grown and developed since its premiere in 2016. Further development and bulking out could make it a first class piece of musical theatre. By Brian Butler • 2 min read
Arts REVIEW: Expenses Only – The Musical @Phil Starr Pavilion In the good old days when I did stage plays and musicals we used to reckon that you needed one hour of rehearsal for every minute of actual playing time on stage when the show played. So it was incredible to learn that the talented singing line-up in this new show by Andrew Stark had just four days By Brian Butler • 2 min read
Arts FILM REVIEW: The Ice King by JAMES ERSKINE Uncompromising, a little waspish, funny and charming, utterly vulnerable, stronger than an Ox, fast, lithe and inspiring, camp, sensual and a rejecter of butch ways of sport and skating John Curry is one of the LGBTQ heroes who should be held up and venerated and this film goes a long way to resto By Eric Page • 3 min read
Arts REVIEW: Dead and Breathing @The Albany, London A somber kaftan laden upper-class cancer patient, Carolyn (Lizan Mitchell), unashamedly bares all as she is bathed by working class (and transsexual) carer, Veronika (Kim Tatum aka Mzz Kimberley). By Tin Nguyen • 1 min read
Arts REVIEW: Jubliee @Lyric, Hammersmith Chris Goode’s adaptation of Derek Jarman and James Whaley’s Jubilee is a ravenously sex-fueled and unvarnished representation of the state that the world is in. It assures to have one question if royalty or religion are still relevant in an ever-changing society. By Tin Nguyen • 1 min read
Arts BOOK REVIEW: The Trial of Roger Casement by Fionnuala Doran Based on his true life story; condemned as a revolutionary, imprisoned in the Tower of London ( This was the 20th century!!) his sexuality exposed by the circulation of his private journals, and on his final day in the courtroom, he delivered a brave, impassioned speech that still resonates. By Eric Page • 2 min read
Arts REVIEW: Hair @The Old Market The American Tribal Love Rock Musical Hair composed by Galt MacDermot originally opened on both Broadway and the West End in 1968. By Besi • 3 min read
Arts OPERA REVIEW: Iolanthe @ENO Iolanthe English National Opera This all new production of Iolanthe has a different director Cal McCrystal from the ENO G&S smash hit Pirates of Penzance, but looks like being as huge a success as that was. McCrystal – who is newish to opera – plays it straight, proper Gilbert and Sullivan and this By Eric Page • 5 min read
Arts REVIEW: TWINKLE @ Phil Starr Pavilion Harold Thropp is a very tired very angry panto dame. Arriving at a down at heel Northern town – probably Sunderland – he discovers that Widow Twankey has been reduced to a tiny cupboard of a dressing room in what he describes as the “cellar “. By Brian Butler • 2 min read
Arts THEATRE REVIEW: Spamalot @Eastbourne Spamalot Devonshire Park Theatre Eastbourne Funnier than the Black Death & lovingly ripped off from the hugely successful 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, this spammier than ever production is full of misfit knights, killer rabbits, dancing nuns and ferocious Frenchmen. This is a gleefully By Eric Page • 3 min read
