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REVIEW: Blood Brothers: Theatre Royal

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Having seen it a number of times, I’m always impressed how Willy Russell’s musical is always a brilliantly captivating experience despite its potential drawbacks. Its songs aren’t exactly great – though Marilyn Monroe and Tell Me It’s Not True always hit the mark; its plot is slightly contrived and very manipulative; it seems to have remained unchanged in its staging for decades (an evil part of me wants them to bring in a radical director who will give it an all female cast and set it during the last years of the Weimar Republic). But despite all this its finale brings a tear to the eye every damn time.

Set in Liverpool in the ’70s, the it tells the story of Mrs Johnstone (Lyn Paul) a poor Catholic woman who has seven kids and another on the way. Except this new one, according to her gynaecologist, is actually twins.

She had budgeted to just about scrape by when the new baby arrives, but her scrimping won’t extend to feeding two mouths. She has a job cleaning house of local posho Mrs Lyons (Sarah Jane Buckley) who can’t have kids herself and can’t adopt as her husband is dead set against raising a child who doesn’t share his DNA. So Mrs Johnstone has one too many kids, Mrs Lyons one too few and, fortuitously, her husband is out of the country for nine months…

Lyons persuades Mrs Johnstone to hand over one of her children. The action then moves on seven years and Mickey (Josh Capper), the son who stayed with his natural mother, becomes best friends with neighbourhood toff Eddie (Mark Hutchinson).

They innocently play together, pronouncing themselves blood brothers, little realising how apt that term is. But as they grown older their lives diverge on different tracks determined by class until they both fall in love with the same childhood sweetheart Linda (Alison Crawford).

Paul gives a truly committed performance carefully balancing her character’s toughness and vulnerability. When she tells Mrs Lyons to choose one of her children but ‘just don’t tell me which one’, the despair in her voice is heartbreaking. Capper fully realises the descent of a likeable young man brought down due to prison, pills, unemployment and the seemingly malign hand of fate. Dean Chisnall’s narrator – perhaps the visible manifestation of this fate – has the requisite amount of steely non-attachment; when he occasionally hints at some sympathy it therefore becomes more affecting.

Blood Brothers is more than a conventional weepie though. Underlying it all is an anger at the the iniquities of the class system. Its political analysis is not exactly subtle – nothing about the show is subtle – but if you understand that subtlety is not necessarily a virtue you’ll be won over by this big-hearted, tough-minded, hugely entertaining evening.

Continues at the Theatre Royal, Brighton until December 3.

For more information and tickets click here.

RadioReverb to broadcast HIV Happy Hour special for World AIDS Day on December 1

RadioReverb, Brighton’s community radio station, to broadcast special edition of their HIV Happy Hour radio show to support World Aids Day on Thursday December 1.

Martin Chattfield the host of HIV Happy Hour
Martin Chattfield the host of HIV Happy Hour

HIV Happy Hour is a magazine style show which launched as a world first on RadioReverb just over one year ago.

Since launching it has become one of RadioReverb’s most listened to shows with the podcast being downloaded from here in the UK to as far as the United States, The Philippines, Australia and Zimbabwe.

Guests have included a cross-section of people who have been affected by HIV, including heterosexual males, females and gay men. The show also interviews professionals who give advice, such as Duncan Churchill, a Brighton HIV consultant from The Lawson Unit at the Royal Sussex County Hospital.

The main aim of the show has always been to challenge the negative thinking and image that many people living with HIV hold about themselves, and to inform and educate listeners in a light hearted and fun way about HIV.

The show openly discusses how guests have coped living with the virus, and promotes positive steps to finding help, advice and comfort. 

Over the last fourteen months, HIV Happy Hour has developed it’s “soundtrack of my life” format which asks weekly guests to talk about the songs which mean so much to them since learning they were HIV positive.

In line with activities around the globe, World Aids Day will be celebrated on HIV Happy Hour with a recorded interview with the team at Lunch Positive, the HIV lunch club, there will be a specially recorded  vignette about World Aids day and why it’s important to raise awareness each year, and this week’s feature “sound track of my life” will come from local resident John Russell, who is a long time survivor of HIV (over 30 years) who was also an old friend of Freddie Mercury.

Martin Chatfield who hosts the live show every week, said: “I feel really proud of the show as it’s the only one of its kind in the world. I’ve learnt so much about living with HIV and as everyone’s journey is different it means we can give out a lot of advice to people listening whether they are HIV or not.

To listen to the HIV Happy Hour World Aids Day special, tune into RadioReverb 97.2 FM on Thursday December 1, between 7-8pm and for regular shows every Thursday at the same time, with repeats on Tuesday’s at 12 Noon and each Wednesday at 9am.

HIV Happy Hour is made possible with a grant from the Rainbow Fund, who give grants to LGBT/HIV organisations providing effective services to LGBT people in Brighton and Hove.

To catch up on some of the back catalogue of shows on the new listen again button, click here:  

To hear RadioReverb on DAB or by logging on click here: 

 

Celebrating the city’s dancers – Dance Active returns for a fifth year

Dance Active, Brighton & Hove’s annual community dance platform, returns for a 5th year bringing 300 dancers to the stage for an evening of hip hop, flamenco, Charleston and much more.

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Delivered by Brighton & Hove City Council’s Active for Life team, the show will take place on Sunday, December 4 at The Brighton Centre at 5.30pm.

The event will once again be compered by multi award-winning hip hop dance teacher, JP Omari who will introduce 25 groups to the stage to perform an impressive array of dance styles.

As well as welcoming back Spiral Sussex’s Flashback Dance Crew, Active for Life are working with Rounded Rhythm to make a piece for Dance Inc., a group of young people with disabilities.

This year will also feature the launch of the Public Health team’s Strong Steady campaign, which encourages adults aged 50+ across the city to improve their strength and balance in order to stay fit and healthy as they get older.

The Active for Life’s Dancing for Health group will demonstrate a dance routine which will then be taught to groups across the city in spring, resulting in a mass performance at the TAKEPART launch in June 2017.

Alongside the performances there will be an information point where details about a whole range of dance and health and well-being opportunities across the city will be provided.

Cllr Julie Cattell
Cllr Julie Cattell

Cllr Julie Cattell, deputy chair of Economic Development & Culture committee, said: “Dance Active is a wonderful evening which brings together the dance community so they can showcase their talents and encourage people to take up dance.

“It’s important to stay active and joining a dance fitness session is a perfect way for all ages and abilities to achieve this.

“Our Active for Life team, and the groups and partners they work with, put in so much enthusiasm and energy to create a fantastic event and every year we look forward to seeing what they’ve achieved.”

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Event: Dance Active

Where: Brighton Centre (Syndicate Wing)

When: Sunday, December 4

Time: 5.30pm

Cost: Tickets for the event will cost £5

To book tickets online, click here:

For more information about Active for Life, click here:

Former Hove MP tells NHS to stop delay and save lives

Ivor Caplin, calls for NHS to prescribe PrEP immediately to those at risk of acquiring HIV.

Ivor Caplin
Ivor Caplin

The former Government Minister and MP for Hove was speaking at the ‘Perspectives and Perceptions of PrEP’ – an OUT @ University College London, World AIDS Day event tonight, November 28.

He told the audience of students and staff from the University’s LGBT group that the use and commissioning of PrEP will be a game changing moment in the fight against increasing HIV infections.

He said: “It is time to stop the procrastination of the NHS and deliver PrEP now. We know it will reduce HIV across the UK so ultimately will save money for the health budget.”

He observed that funding PrEP could be done by very small reductions in other budgets and asked why do NHS spend £80m a year on funding paracetamol which costs 29p in Tesco?

He said by reducing that budget by 20 million pounds you could immediately pay for the provision of PrEP without affecting other important life changing drugs.

He also called for no hysterical comments pitting patient against patient for life saving drugs which he accused the Department of Health of encouraging after the first court case was lost.

He concluded saying: “Over the last 30 years many thousands have been lost to HIV but we as this generation now have the opportunity to begin the reduction and maybe eventually the end of HIV that’s why every medical advance is important in this fight.”

PrEP, a single pill administered daily, protects HIV – negative people from the HIV virus before any potential exposure with studies showing that PrEP can reduce the risk of HIV infection from unprotected sex by over 90%.

BOOK REVIEW: A Boxful of Ideas: John Dixon & Jeffrey Doorn

boxfulofideasfrontA Boxful of Ideas

Edited by

John Dixon Jeffrey Doorn

 

A Boxful of Ideas is the latest and most ambitious an­thol­ogy from Gay Authors Work­shop. There’s a strong selection of short stories, poems, all with a current take on topics of interest. It’s a superb anthology not just of good stories filled with humor, honesty and well written plots that will connect with all Queers readers, but also an anthology of style and prose. It has range and ambition and also a cozy comfortable edge. I enjoyed reading it all.

Paradise Press, founded 1999, is run by a collective and has published over forty titles.

Authors featured in this anthology include:

  • Greg Woods, Emeritus Professor of Gay and Les­bian Studies at Nottingham Trent Uni­versity
  • Jeremy Kingston, former theatre critic of The Times
  • Chris Beckett, prize-winning poet and author of Ethiopia Boy
  • V. G. Lee, comedian, novelist, winner of the Ultimate Planet Award for established writer
  • Donald West, psychiatrist, author of one of the first British books on homosexuality

Out now, Paperback

£8.99

For more info or to buy the book see the publishers website here, or attend the launch event at Gays the Word Bookshop.

A Boxful of Ideas launch

Thurs 8 Dec 7pm

@ Gays The Word

66 Marchmont Street

London WC1N 1AB

 

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