LGBT+
FreeheldFriday, 19 February 2016
There’s always a slight sinking feeling when the first words to appear onscreen are "Based on a True Story". The first worry is that it’s a story you already know, and the movie will lack any narrative surprises, the second that it will be a Good... Read more... |
The Rolling Stone, Orange Tree TheatreThursday, 21 January 2016
I’m still pondering the title of Chris Urch’s new play. On the surface it’s clear enough: The Rolling Stone is a weekly newspaper in Uganda that has been notorious for pursuing that country’s anti-gay agenda. In particular, at the beginning of the... Read more... |
London Spy, Series Finale, BBC TwoTuesday, 08 December 2015
Well, they're saying this was the final episode, but these days you never know how long TV's ratings-hungry marketeers might eke a successful show out for. London Spy 2 would be a major ask, considering how this series somehow spun a bare minimum of... Read more... |
TangerineWednesday, 11 November 2015
American director Sean Baker is an adept at exploring different Los Angeles worlds that we don’t often see portrayed in standard Hollywood fare. His much-acclaimed Starlet, from 2012, took us into the city’s porn industry (in an entirely non-... Read more... |
First Person: Writing about the transgender experienceTuesday, 27 October 2015
My play Rotterdam opens this week at Theatre503 (I’m getting the plug in early). It’s about two women who are in a relationship and how that relationship changes when one reveals that he has always identified as male. Their names are Alice and... Read more... |
How Gay Is Pakistan?, BBC ThreeWednesday, 21 October 2015
As a YouTube comic Mawaan Rizwan is clearly at ease on screen, and right at the beginning of How Gay Is Pakistan? he was telling us about coming out as gay to his family last year: it was “the worst news ever for Pakistani parents”. Director Masood... Read more... |
Tipping the Velvet, Lyric HammersmithTuesday, 29 September 2015
Theatre is in the very bones of this bold adaptation, with the Lyric gifted a cameo role: past productions are fleetingly pastiched in a flashback to the era of the venue’s foundation. Laura Wade and Lyndsey Turner translate the vividly... Read more... |
Dispatches: Hunted - Gay and Afraid, Channel 4Friday, 24 July 2015
There can’t be many American public figures who are welcome on Russian television these days, but Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage is one of them. In Hunted: Gay and Afraid we saw him sitting in on legislative gatherings too,... Read more... |
Matthew Bourne's The Car Man, Sadler's WellsMonday, 20 July 2015
The original idea for the subtitle of this show, first made in 2000 and last seen at Sadler's Wells in 2007, was apparently "An Auto-Erotic Thriller". Yes, groan. But "erotic thriller" is a much straighter description of The Car Man than its actual... Read more... |
Positive: Introducing a comedy about HIV/AIDSMonday, 29 June 2015
Of all the art forms, theatre has been most attentive to the story of HIV/AIDS. Leading the way in America there was Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart (1985) and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (1991). In the UK the most resonant exploration of the... Read more... |
Death in Venice, Garsington OperaMonday, 22 June 2015
Lagoon, miasma and scirocco may seem as far away as you can get from the rolling hills and pleasant airs of the Wormsley Estate in deepest home counties territory. Nor are the bleached bones of Britten’s bleak if ultimately transformative operatic... Read more... |
DVD: Turned Towards the SunTuesday, 05 May 2015
The phrase “improbable life” crops up more than once in Greg Olliver’s highly engaging documentary Turned Towards the Sun about the poet Micky Burn (its title is that of the writer’s autobiography). It’s a contradiction in terms, perhaps, but as a... Read more... |
