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Winner of best float at Brighton Pride 2015 revealed

Brighton and Hove City Council, LGBT Workers Forum win best float at Brighton Pride 2015 awards.

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Colin Blanchflower accepted the award on behalf of the forum from Pride Director Paul Kemp and Dulcie Weaver at the Rainbow Fund and Pride Business awards at the Hilton Brighton Metropole Hotel on Tuesday, September 8.

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The theme of the entry was Rousseau does Rio! and featured 110 people on the float, celebrating diversity from all continents of the world and all ages including some young people from the RUOK project. The oldest person on the float was Lynn aged 86, the youngest was Anphi just 2 months old who was with her proud family.

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Eric Page with the Pride Legend Medal for Best Float

The two people behind making it happen and putting the winning entry together were Eric Page, from the steering group of the Brighton and Hove City Council LGBT Workers Forum who ensured the pride float and procession entry made it out in one piece on the day and Jits Patel, the designer who created the magnificent costumes, headdresses and outfits.

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Jits Patel with the Pride Legend Medal for Best Float

PREVIEW: Crush the Musical

Composer Kath Gotts and writer Maureen Chadwick of the camp lesbian musical Crush talk to Jill Gardiner.

Crush the Musical

A new musical comedy with a lesbian twist at the Theatre Royal, Brighton? That has to be a first, and judging by the performance I saw, Crush is fabulously camp and hilarious: St Trinian’s meets Marlene Dietrich, set in a girls’ school where rebellion is seething, on the verge of the swinging sixties.

From a lively tap-dance routine in hockey boots, with navy-knickered schoolgirls swooning over sexy new games mistress Miss Givings, to a butch guardian angel, in leathers on a motorbike, leading the way to a gay London nightclub, this is a coming out story, a triumph of lesbian camp and a great night out.

Crush the Musical

After opening at Belgrade Theatre, Coventry (Sept 4), it’s at Brighton’s Theatre Royal (Sept 22–26), then London’s Richmond Theatre (Sept 29–Oct 3).

Crush is the latest production from the talented and successful partners who brought us Bad Girls, the ITV prison drama, and Bad Girls: The Musical, Kath Gotts the composer and Maureen Chadwick the writer. I caught up with them between rehearsals.

Kath Gotts the composer
Kath Gotts the composer

So, how do you write a musical?

Maureen: “Well, the story comes first, it absolutely has to have a story to make the audience want to find out what comes next.”

Kath: “Although the story has developed over time, the characters have remained constant.”

Maureen: “I write what’s called the book.”

Kath: “You’ve got to set up the situation. With a song like Navy Knicks, we knew there would be a song for the entrance of the games mistress, so I sit and think about the lyrics, but they’re always attached to a bit of tune.”

Maureen: “You start singing them in your head, don’t you?”

Maureen Chadwick
Maureen Chadwick

Kath: “I sit and sing at my desk, writing down things, and then it gradually takes a musical shape and a lyrical form. I’ll then say, ‘Oh, I’ve got what this song is going to do’.”

Maureen: “I do chip in some lyrics, if I’m allowed.”

Kath: “I’ll chip in bits of dialogue too.”

Maureen: “We read bits of the script aloud all the time. That means further edits. And we’re also trying to make the songs reveal something about a character or advance the plot.”

Kath: “It’s constant finessing and workshopping, sometimes in front of an audience. We go over it until we’ve put in so much fun and humour that, hopefully, it’ll be irresistible. It’s our version of lesbian camp, it’s frothy lesbian fun.”

How did you get the idea for Crush?

Kath: “It’s slightly influenced by my schooldays, a love of St Trinian’s films and schoolgirl fiction. It came from us wanting to write a musical about a lesbian romance that would excite us, and also from loving old-fashioned musical comedy. We used to watch Fred and Ginger movies all the time and just loved that easy romance, and wanted a piece of it for ourselves.”

Maureen: “Our school in Crush was always ahead of the times, since it’s founded by a suffragette, with a proud tradition of fostering free spirits from all walks of life. But it’s under threat from the new headmistress, Miss Bleacher, who is our Mrs Thatcher, a reactionary tyrant, trying to hold back the sexual revolution and bring back Victorian values. Top of her hit list are the two sixth formers accused of ‘unnatural behaviour’ in the Art Room. But hope is revived by a glamorous Games Mistress and it’s hockey sticks to the fore in an all-out battle to save the school and the course of true love.”

Crush is full of archetypal gay experiences, isn’t it?

Maureen: “The opening number for Act II is set in Piccadilly Circus: they’ve run away to London, as so many of us do, and that’s traditionally where anybody who’s escaping from somewhere and coming to London starts off.”

Kath: “London is that mecca for gay runaways, where you think you’re going to find your people and your life. It’s a dream sequence. There you are, feeling sad, a suicidal teenager, and along comes your fantasy guardian angel, striding through the dry ice getting off a motorbike…”

Maureen: “…To whisk you off to an underground nightclub, which in our minds was modelled on Gateways. In this version it’s the Stairways Club, hosted by Marlene Dietrich. Within this dream sequence Susan has to wake up and work out what she wants.”

Kath: “She’s imagined this club which of course is far more fabulous than anybody’s first club, and people there look interesting and arty, fabulous and decadent.”

Maureen: “And glamorous, and alternative, and they welcome her, which isn’t necessarily the experience we’ve all had when we first enter into the gay scene!”

Kath: “Finding a place where everyone’s embracing you into their world. Through that dream sequence, she realises who it is she truly loves, and what she has to do.”

How is it possible to get Crush into mainstream theatres and for school parties to be among those buying tickets?

Maureen: “The major thing is the shift in social attitudes to homosexuality. Now there’s an obligation on schools to recognise that kind of diversity.”

Kath: “When Bad Girls: The Musical was first on about nine years ago, there was still debate about whether or not Helen and Nikki at the end should just hold hands or kiss! Now we’re coming up to a hundred amateur productions of Bad Girls, around the world, all of which include Helen and Nikki kissing at the end. Great!”

Crush The Musical is sponsoring some school workshops by Diversity Role Models (acclaimed for their success in encouraging greater understanding of gay people among teenagers) as well as giving everyone a fun night out with toe-tapping tunes, camp comedy, and a tweak of the heart strings.


Event: Crush The Musical

Where: Theatre Royal, New Road, Brighton

When: September 22-26

Time: 7.30p, daily plus 2.30pm matinees on Thursday and Saturday afternoons

Tickets: £12.90 – £38.90 plus £2.85 transaction fee

To book online, click here:

Victory for Royal Vauxhall Tavern campaigners

Following a community campaign, the Royal Vauxhall Tavern (or RVT), the UK’s oldest LGBTQ pub, becomes a listed building.

Royal Vauxhall Tavern

The RVT is the first building in the country listed for its significance to LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) heritage.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport confirmed the designation on the advice of Historic England (formerly English Heritage).

The news is a victory for RVT Future, a campaign group made up of performers, promoters
and punters who cherish the pub. It was set up after the Tavern’s sale last year to Immovate, an Austrian property development company.

Immovate has declined to meet the RVT community or reveal its plans for the site and recruited consultants to try to block the listing.

Amy Lamé
Amy Lamé

RVT Future chair Amy Lamé, co-founder and host of long-running RVT night Duckie, said: “The listing is a fantastic milestone for our community and a victory against the odds for our beloved pub. We look forward to continuing our work to ensure the RVT remains a vibrant space of LGBTQ community and culture for generations to come. The RVT now joins New York’s Stonewall Inn, home of the gay liberation movement, in being officially recognised for its contribution to social history. We thank our many, many supporters from across London and further afield.”

Built around 1860, the RVT has been a hub of LGBTQ community since the 1940s or earlier.

Paul O’Grady developed his legendary drag act Lily Savage there in the 80s, a period during which the pub was also visited by Princess Diana in drag and raided by police in rubber
gloves.

Emily Gee, Historic England’s Head of Designation, said: “The Royal Vauxhall Tavern is an enduring and important venue for the LGBTQ community. Built on the site of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, it carries on the tradition of alternative and bohemian entertainment which is bound up in this part of London’s history and identity.”

RVT Future campaign manager Rob Holley, promoter of RVT night Push The Button, added: “We’re chuffed to bits but our work isn’t finished! We’re now calling on Immovate to finally talk to us, so we can all ensure this special venue continues to serve the community.

“If Immovate don’t think they can make the Tavern work as a listed pub, we invite them to
open discussions about a community buy-out. Sell it to a group of people who actually have
faith in the commercial viability of this phenomenal venue. We have the means to do this and
some exciting ideas about how the RVT could be improved for everybody. Meanwhile, we
invite everyone who cherishes the Tavern to join us at the bar to celebrate!”

Supporters of the listing application, written by RVT Future’s Ben Walters, included Mayor of
London Boris Johnson, Sir Ian McKellen and Paul O’Grady, as well as local residents,
charities, architects, historians and politicians.

To view a full list of supporters, click here: 

 

‘Across the Pond’ raises over £1,000 for Sussex Beacon

A fundraiser at Proud Cabaret in Kemptown at the end of July organised and hosted by entertainer Mysterry raised £1063.53 for the Sussex Beacon.

Across The Pond

The show entitled Across the Pond was attended by the Mayor of Brighton and Hove, Cllr Linda Hyde and her Consort, was directed and choreographed by West End director Carole Todd, compered by Mysterry and the company included Maisie Trollette, Laura Nixon, Miss Jason, Paul Hazel, Marianne Robinson, the Brighton Academy Dancers, Laura-Leigh Parter, Megan Jupp, Paddy Joe Martin, Jordan Lamarca with Josh Mills on keyboards.

Total raised included £386.53 from a raffle with the rest coming from tickets sales.

Across the Pond Beacon Fundraiser
Pictured from left to right: Sean Skinner, Matthew Etherington, Ian Money, Carole Todd, Terry Shaw, Jim Stanford

Raffle prizes donated included:

♦ A hamper from Chris Sarsen of Co-op Funeral Care

♦ A Pet Portrait by Jennifer Morris

♦ A luxury stay at the award-winning Swan House, in Hastings donated by Brendan McDonagh

♦ Vouchers for Streamline Taxis

♦ The Beacon provided fragrances, a wine hamper and a painting.

Special thanks to Collin Day for hosting the front of house, to the ushers Chris Farley and Steve Connor and the sharp shooting Nick Ford Photography for official photographs of the evening.

To purchase photos online from Nick (a percentage goes to The Sussex Beacon, click here:

 

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