No, they weren’t ‘just friends’!
This cheeky, fun little book aims to tilt some of the balance back into the other half of the population’s history, with a tight focus on female same-sex desire. Lesbian, Sapphic love has been written out of history, erased, disbelieved or plain deleted, showing a cavalier attitude to the historical events and influential doings of some pretty remarkable women.
From Anne Bonny and Mary Read who sailed the seas together disguised as pirates, to US football captain Megan Rapinoe declaring “You can’t win a championship without gays on your team,” via countless literary salons and tuxedos, A Short History of Queer Women sets the record straight on women who have loved other women through the ages.
It’s stuffed full of glorious titbits of info, meticulously researched, deliciously contextualised and done with real flair and humour. Who says lesbians can’t be funny? Here we have much proof, along with excellent historical insights into lives lived fully openly and loving without fear, and Loehr shared the stories of some wild women who lived and loved with urgent, stunning brilliance.
The narratives shared here offer us learning and wisdom, giving us modern 21st century LGBTQs a kick up our complacencies and reminding us that there’s nothing new under the sun, but plenty of filthy lady loving that’s been hidden in the shade.
Loehr is that person you meet at a party who makes you laugh, leaves you feeling like you’ve learned loads and delights you with their ability to spin a complex real-life story into a compelling relevant narrative making you smile from ear to ear at the sheer shocking joy of it. Seriously funny, acerbic as hell and sharp as a very pointy thing.
Kirsty Loehr is a local Brighton writer. She loves women, football, history, and comedy – but not necessarily in that order. Here, Loehr give us a book which allows for hours of fun reading, plenty of dinner party ‘did you know’ and even the very rare opportunity for this queer man to impress his lesbian friends with some hitherto obscured fascinating lesbian history!
It’s that ‘perfect gift book’, easy to read, small, neat and engaging, filled with fascinating narratives about some eye-popping women and their staunchly passionate love lives. Like all good history books it leaves you with an appetite to learn more (Billie Holliday’s beautifully tart letters to ex-lover Tallulah Bankhead anyone? I need to know more), and offers the casual reader a reassurance of the constant affirming glorious presence of women loving women throughout known herstory.
Out now, RRP £8.99
For more info or to order the book see the publisher’s website here:
The intersections of faith and sexuality in this book are explored with insight and humour, his contemplative spiritual reconciliations of who he is with his faith offers an insight into the deeply personal understandings of Muslims with their belief.
This is the first ENO production of Yeoman and as the home of English Opera a fortuitous choice indeed. Yeoman is a slightly less comedic opera than the usual G&S fare, a dark story, not so much topseyturvey plotting and thematic approaches to character which are less than consistently silly.
Soprano
Sir Richard Cholmondeley sung by Steven Page is terrific, charming and convincing, gliding around the stage and presenting an engaging performance, his voice delights. Conductor Chris Hopkins keeps the full pit in his confident control and although the projected faux BBC newscast rather overshadows the opening the orchestra are in fine mode throughout.
ENO
Jo Davies imports
It’s a beguiling set up, allowing the different Cher’s to interact, care, admonish and encourage each other as the fragilities and challenges of her impressive range of talents across three main sections of her career, are presented to us. There’s a knowing humour running thought this performance, reflecting contemporary Cher’s own approach to her career, gracefully nodding to her rich vein of camp and the legions of Gay male fans who have adored her and known her in their dance floors and anthems. It’s testimony to the emotional thrall that Cher keeps her worshiping Queers in, that there was a huge, and I mean HUGE range of Queers packing out the Theatre Royal last night, from a royal box full of young fierce Drag Queens to the stalls full of ageless silver-haired Homo’s, there was enough Botox on show to give Cher an extra decade of life and the excitement was electric.
The crew who crafted this show really know how to offer up the Oomph and the choreographed frenetic, full rigging brilliance of the lights, dancing and sound are top notch, giving the show a quality feel and allowing it to transcend any suggestion of it being a tribute act. Written by Tony award-winning Rick Elice, this UK production is directed by Arlene Phillips, choreographed by Oti Mabuse, with costumes by Gabriella Slade it simply slays. This shimmering new production features a fresh take on her show-stopping costumes which earned her the title of “the ruler of outré reinvention” from Vouge, the set is simple, rolling on and off, with mirrors and bars displaying the chronological progression.
This is a big show, rather neatly crammed into the small spaces of the Theatre Royal stage but you can see how it will look in the West End when it, eventually gets there. It’s planned, plotted and built for a huge space and the production values, staging and lighting feel far more stadium concert than rococo vintage theatre. The super polished production values hide a ratty plot and script, but everyone knew the stories and music, so it was more a bouncing ball narrative than launching any surprises at us, did I learn anything? Hmmmm, that Cher won an Oscar! People who abused her are given a tender posting here reflecting perhaps more of Cher’s own personality and ability to forgive than their own devious exploitative natures, but the focus of the show is Her, not them, and the overall psychological insight offered into both the choices in her singing and performance life are backed up by the insights into her romantic choices, allowing the women who is Cher to reach an emotional maturity whilst the show unfolds. It’s neatly done, watching her empower herself, her experiences giving insight and strength and ultimately power and agency over her own life. She’s renowned for battling for fame and autonomy in male-dominated industries.
The Theatre Royal Brighton has a strict policy of asking people, quite rightly, to turn off their mobile devices before a show starts and prohibits photography or filming of any show, this was stated clearly at the beginning of this show. It’s hugely intrusive for people to be using devices to film or photograph inside a dark theatre, so quite why the cast openly invited people to film them during the final parts of the show is not clear. Obviously, they harvest a rich stream of badly focused, badly filmed social media content which allows the show to ride a wave of mediocre TockTicked Insta Twitwaddle all the way to the bank but it also gets in the way of those of us that like to watch a show. The people in front all had their phones out, urged on by the cast, holding their cameras up, fully lit and bright, blocking the view of the people behind, even though everyone was standing. Simple bad manners, it’s not Cher on stage, it’s not a concert, it’s not on. Three shorter people next to me, who had paid a goodly sum for their tickets missed out completely on the last fifteen minutes of the show because of the selfish behaviours of the phone maniacs capturing wobbly footage of the show and staring unresponsively at their screens. Beware cast, you’ll reap the whirlwind!
My companion who only knows Cher from Believe enjoyed themselves, smiling at the glittery energy being shared by the dancers and singers on stage and left surprised by the breadth of her artistic abilities. The singing was superb across the board, all three Cher’s delivering timeless songs with a passion and emotional connection that the audience adored. Offering their own instantly recognisable take on Cher and her distinctive alto voice whist driving their own passion into the musical, when they combined voices, the Tripartite Cher affect was amazing and more than made up for the jukebox musical shortening of some of the other songs.
Villada’s magical prose is alive the mind, restless, startling, bursting out like heady roses filled with the flesh ripping thorns of brutal honesty exploration of the experience of selling your body to live in this diverse community of poor sex workers. The construction of the narrative is flawless, seducing you on, prowling the outskirts of imagination, soft fur, claw, the warmth of a den all drawing you into this raw exploration of the human need for love.
An evening of pure queer joy was had with the Sunday Times best-seller Juno Dawson, who invited us to join them at their uber cool Literary Trans Salon, which oozed charm and bookish delights, for an interview with the delightful Travis Alabanza – award-winning writer, performer and theatre maker. They talked about their writing, upbringing, class, sex, ideas, sex, narrative journeys, current books and ‘working the circuit’.
The New Voices panel with Okechukwu Nzelu – in conversation with three new writers – allowed us to listen to writers recently published, although often writing for a long time, as they talked about their own journeys to being published. Hearing them read their own works to an attentive queer house was simply lovely. Elizabeth Chakrabarty frankly discussing compassion and hate crime was revelatory; Jon Ransom sharing the power of his seminal novel on grief brought the room to a tangible stillness; Tice Cin‘s modest soft exploration of intersections of identity and visibility was moving and presented awareness with gut punch prose.
Other highlights of the festival: a fun and eye opening learning session from podcasters
The Coast is Queer 2022 delivered quality arts and literature; an opportunity to listen in great comfort to queers talking about queers. Attendees also had the opportunity to buy and browse the bookshelf, curated by Brighton & Hove’s independent bookshop: Feminist Bookshop.
The tightly planned, clockwork action of the farce, building on layers of interaction and repetition has a meditative quality to it as it speeds up and at the same time appears to be going wildly out of control. This delightfully ominous change of tempo, ever faster -ever madder -offering the cast some stand out physical comedy, which are grasped with gusto but also taxes the narrative to keep up unless we really know and care for the characters.
The cast is a delight, each playing a cliched theatrical type but with warmth and lived experience showing through, it feels shabby, slightly down at heel, doing the provincial theatrical tours, frayed egos and making do just as it’s supposed to. The musty Rep company reproduced well which allows the comedy to build to its raucous thunderous climaxes. We get to see the play within a play three times, from different perspectives, literally from backstage ( as the play goes on out-front) and finally almost at the end of it’s run when the fraying of temperament, backstage rivalry, relationships and cabin fever play out in a frenzy of misunderstanding and farcical violence. It’s consistently funny, brilliantly so at times and had the added addition of a small set failure which only added to the delight of the audience as the cast improvised their way around it. Wonderful.
It’s in three acts, the second slightly long and endlessly frenetic but perhaps that’s part of it’s charm, breathless action smashes across the stage but a lack of connection with the characters, them being played more for clichéd excitement than for understanding of motive made the silent gurning, hand gestures and cartoon violence less a essay in mounting desperation and more an experience in clowning, either way the audience loved it.
This was my first time watching Noises Off and it made me laugh out loud at some seriously absurd lines and although impressed by the physically manic clowning on stage it was the relentlessly mangled absurdist lines which brought out the bigger laughs with me.
Macqueen
You must be logged in to post a comment.