LGBT+
User Not Found, The CoffeeWorks Project review - solo play set in a café offers food for thoughtTuesday, 28 May 2019
Who is that slithering on the floor by your foot, or coming to rest by or upon your knee? Audiences lucky enough to find themselves at User Not Found, the latest from the ever-enterprising site-specific company Dante or Die, should be prepared to... Read more... |
Manga, British Museum review - stories for outsidersThursday, 23 May 2019
Manga, the Japanese art of the graphic novel, took its modern form in the 1800s. Illustrated stories already had a long heritage in Japan — encompassing woodblock prints and illustrated scrolls and novels — but the introduction of the printing press... Read more... |
Gentleman Jack, BBC One review - the revolutionary life of Anne ListerMonday, 20 May 2019
In 2010, Maxine Peake starred in The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, but this new dramatisation of Lister’s life has been gestating in Sally Wainwright’s brain for 20 years, and finally arrives under the auspices of the BBC and HBO. Hugely... Read more... |
Tucked review - dispiriting British drag queen dramaSunday, 19 May 2019
It would be great to herald this low-budget drama about an elderly drag queen and his friendship with a young gay singer-songwriter as a little gem of British indie cinema. But Tucked, which aims to be an odd-couple tale of heart-warming... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: MauriceFriday, 17 May 2019
“Publishable, but worth it?” EM Forster’s hesitations about the value of Maurice, his novel of Edwardian homosexuality – written in 1913-14, it was published only posthumously, in 1971 – were certainly redeemed by James Ivory’s 1987 film of the book... Read more... |
Director Jason Barker: ‘Trans lives are often portrayed so bleakly’Thursday, 04 April 2019
When Jason and Tracey were trying for a baby, the worst happened. Tracey was diagnosed with breast cancer, and although she eventually recovered, was unable to carry a child. For Jason, the answer was clear - as a trans man, he would become pregnant... Read more... |
Benjamin review - awkward romcom meets cultural analysisWednesday, 13 March 2019
Benjamin is the debut feature of Simon Amstell, a young director who has thought cleverly about the torments (and hilarities) of artistic creation in an information-soaked world. The protagonist Benjamin (Colin Morgan) lives in a contemporary London... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Freak ShowFriday, 08 March 2019
You might think an American high school comedy an unlikely place to locate a love letter to Oscar Wilde – even if there’s a flamboyantly gay story behind it. But Freak Show screenwriters Beth Rigazio and Patrick J Clifton, adapting James St James’... Read more... |
Gently Down the Stream, Park Theatre review - gay history sifted for compact dramaTuesday, 19 February 2019
Ripeness is sometimes all. 80-year-old Martin Sherman's recent play, receiving its UK premiere at canny Park Theatre, says more about gay history in 100 selective minutes than The Inheritance managed in six and a half hours. True, it's not aiming at... Read more... |
Boy Erased review - gay vs God drama treated with empathyWednesday, 06 February 2019
Joel Edgerton’s second turn as a director is the second film in a year to treat the subject of gay conversion therapy. The first was Desiree Akhavan’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post, whose victory at Sundance a year ago confirmed, symbolically not... Read more... |
Coming Clean, Trafalgar Studios review - Kevin Elyot play has lost the pathos if not the plotTuesday, 15 January 2019
Time and a transfer haven't been kind to this well-meaning but surface-thin revival of Coming Clean, the 1982 Kevin Elyot play that is surely more poignant than is ever apparent here. Two summers ago, much the same cast found a better-calibrated way... Read more... |
VoD: 1985Friday, 11 January 2019
Dallas writer-director Yen Tan has brought 1985 back to stylistic basics, and the resulting resolute lack of adornment enhances his film’s concentration on a story that achieves indisputably powerful, and notably reserved emotion. Independent cinema... Read more... |
