Author: Kat Pope

It’s not often that I see a piece of theatre that makes me cry with laughter one minute and then just cry the next, but My Gay Best Friend managed it easily and I walked out of the Emporium with a tear still in my eye.

Racquell and Gavin are best friends. Both work in Boots in Eastbourne, he as a cleaner and she as a shop assistant. They met when he knocked her carefully put together nail varnish display over with a mop, went arse over tit and ended up in A&E “with four stitches and a lifelong scar.”

Now both are sitting in different toilets, chewing over their lives and their friendship, and talking directly to us, the audience.

Racquell is waiting to go on stage to sing for the first time in a very long time, while Gavin is trying to produce a potful of sperm to inseminate the bull dyke next door.

And there they are for most of the evening. Characters sitting in bogs doesn’t seem like a very promising start to an evening’s theatre, but it’s the perfect mirrored environment for them both to spill the beans (and for Gavin to hopefully spill more than that….)

Funny and soulful at the same time is a difficult act to pull off, but writer Nigel Fairs, who plays his own (somewhat autobiographical) creation Gavin, not only gets away with it, but runs with it and scores a touchdown. It works in two ways: as a series of monologues that would stand up on their own, but when they intertwine you get theatrical dynamite and a beautiful portrait of a strained but solid relationship where each person is as needy of the other but for very different reasons.

It’s easy to see that Racquell, played by ex-Doctor Who and Eastenders actress Louise Jameson, has been damaged by something or someone along the way, but when the revelation comes, it’s heart-wrenching. Jameson’s acting is wonderfully arms flailing Northern brash one minute and eye of the storm the next. She fixes the audience with a steely eye, and seems unafraid to talk in her broad Barnsley accent about anything (“Do you remember discovering your clitoris, girls?”), until it touches on things that no one wants to have to hear.

The more solid, stable figure, nicely spoken Gavin, has got one of those faces that make people open up to him which is sometimes a blessing (when meeting Racquell) and sometimes a curse (when in a darkroom in Sitges). But he’s had his problems, not least of which was growing up gay in Burgess Hill and coming out in the 80s when it was “all those dreadful tombstones on the telly.” Now 45, he thinks  that as a gay man he’s become invisible and despairs of ever having a meaningful relationship again.

The success of this production relies on whether we buy into both characters and their complex relationship, and that’s easy to do with writing this intimate, engaging, and spot on. It’s as if the duo are talking to us over a cup of tea and a Nice biscuit at the kitchen table, with their eyes frequently meeting ours as they let us in on their little secrets, foibles, worries, and often their pain.

This small but perfectly formed production is a must-see for any gay men and fag-hags out there. I guarantee you’ll recognise just a little bit of yourself in Gavin and Racquell. Actually, it’s simply a must-see performance for everyone. Power to its elbow as it goes off on its tiny weeny tour, and I really hope My Gay Best Friend gets a lot more exposure over the next few years. It certainly deserves it. I’ll be looking out for the name Nigel Fairs in the future and will jump at the chance of a ticket to anything else he writes, as should you. I’m confident you won’t be disappointed.

WHAT: My Gay Best Friend

WHERE: The Emporium, London Road, Brighton

WHEN: You’ve missed it, but it’s in Bath and Barnstaple later in the year if you’re near there

RUNNING TIME: 80 minutes

MORE INFO: CLICK HERE:

WOULD I SEE IT AGAIN: Yes, and I’d take all my mates too

Let’s Misbehave plays as we take our seats, setting the scene nicely for the one-woman show to follow.

 “Trouser-wearing characters are born, not made,” exclaims Rose Collis, writer, historian and performer, steering clear of the ‘G’ word. No, her horizons are broader than just queers. Rose is talking about characters who dominate, appear larger than life, stay on in the memory, make an impact – and it just so happens that most of them are LGBT!

With her trusty banjolele, Bud, and dressed to the nines in full dress suit (cummerbund and bow tie included), Rose guides us skillfully through the highlights of the lives of her chosen subjects, squeezing all the best anecdotes in along the way. Interspersing the chat with songs – evergreens and originals – we’re entertained and informed in equal measure.

First up for scrutiny is Nancy Spain, a nice Roedean girl gone to the dark side, who had a nice line in double entendre cookbooks and whose columns in Beaverbrook’s Daily Express were so catty that the paper got sued twice by Evelyn Waugh. She was killed in a plane crash along with her partner on their way to the Grand National, leaving two young orphaned boys.

Then there was Colonel Sir Victor Barker DSO (Dick Shot Off was the quip on many a lip), a military man who began life as Valerie Arkell-Smith until she got fed up with being married to no-good men and decided the life of a retired colonel was much more comfortable.

A name I vaguely remember from my youth, Dougie Bing was so vain that he often quipped; “I never leave the house without looking like Dougie Bing.” 

Strangely, when I got home from the show and turned on Radio 4, what was on the radio but a programme about Bing starring Julian Clary and filmed in Brighton. Spooky!

Dougie was an old reprobate and the most likely of the TWCs (Trouser-Wearing Characters) to call you ‘dear boy’. He had the distinction of being the first female impersonator to have a show on the Beeb, and from the 50s onwards he became the best panto dame in the business. He ended his time in the Denville Hall Home for Retired Actors where he continued to be a big old queer pain in the bum.

Lastly, there’s Coral Browne, another TWC I’m old enough to remember. Coral was a serial wedder, but also had affairs with numerous women. This omnisexual Oz girl turned posh Brit stage star was engaged to Jack Buchanan in the 40s but when he jilted her she ended up marrying his gay understudy.

Rose, in her neat little show, brings these disparate characters to life with gusto and obvious affection. Not blessed with the best of voices, she gives it a good go anyway and her natural enthusiasm carries her through, but she strums Bud like a pro. Cameo appearances from the likes of Vincent Price (married to Browne), Marlene Dietrich (mate of Spain’s), and Noël Coward (mate of everyone’s so it seems!) spice up the stories and make you want to go and look the characters up on the net after the show’s finished, or go and search out Rose’s own book about one of her TWC’s, Nancy Spain.

I came away thinking if only all history teachers could be as enthusiastic as Rose, every pupil would come away with an A*!

WHAT: Trouser-Wearing Characters

WHERE: The Emporium, London Road, Brighton

WHEN: 26 & 27 July, 7.30pm

RUNNING TIME: an hour

MORE INFO: CLICK HERE:

WOULD I GO AGAIN: Yes, to hear about more TWCs!

The fantastically monickered Cush Jumbo is a girl with twin passions. They’re passions she’s had from when she were a nipper, and those passions are Josephine Baker and performing on stage. In Josephine and I she combines them to dazzling effect.

The scene is a 1920’s St Louis nightclub and we’re sitting slap bang in the middle of it, fiddling with the candles on our tables, wondering if the ad hoc chairs below us are going to take our weight, when a girl rushes onto the stage. She’s so sorry she’s late, she says, breathlessly, as she hauls a real dog out of her bag and thrusts him (Henry) into the stage manager’s arms. She was on her way here, she continues, gasping, and got a call from her agent about a call-back for a part in a big American series. She had to take it, she just had to….

And there. We’re hooked. Hooked into ‘I”s word, whoever ‘I’ is. Is she Jumbo herself, or is she a construct, a part Jumbo’s playing? It’s only about half way in that we begin to twig and by then it really doesn’t matter anyway.

Jumbo, who stars in her own debut play, interweaves Baker’s life story with a first-person narrative of an aspiring young actress, finding links, be they experiences of racism in different eras or how best to juggle career and family.

The ‘I’ in the piece has loved Baker since she was a kid and saw her in Zou Zou, “and she wasn’t the maid. She was the star!” This led to a Tiny Tears doll makeover, and dolls are used throughout Jumbo’s show, whether it’s Tiny Tears Josephine herself responding with nods and shakes of the head to ‘I”s questions, or hidden in the audience to represent the ‘rainbow tribe’ of twelve children that Baker eventually adopted, and gathered up by Jumbo singing as Baker later on in the show.

As ‘I’ grows up, her fascination with Baker extends from collecting memorabilia of her life and career, to wanting a career on stage for herself too. She puts shows on in her family living room and charges her parents entry and a penny for milk and a cream cracker in the interval.

Shuttling back and forth between ‘I’ and Baker, Jumbo excels in quick changes and making the audience believe in a split second that they’ve been taken from one woman’s world to another’s. Along the way we learn much about Baker’s extraordinary life, beginning in a broken home in St Louis, through international stardom as a dancer and film star, through to her triumphant comeback show in 1973 and her death soon after.

Jumbo’s energy and passion is a thing of beauty. One minute she’s Josephine, a 13 year old getting married to get away from a dead end life in St Louis, the next she’s ‘I’ and figuring out how to juggle the need for kids with a seven series US deal that looks like it’s coming her way. Then it’s back to Josephine, famous now and back in the States but still being made to get to her hotel penthouse suite by the back door.

I wish we’d had a little more of Jumbo doing Baker’s early googly-eyed, loose-limbed performances as when she briefly does them, she’s so good you want to see more of what made Baker such a huge star.

But that’s not a quibble: it’s a wanting more. And I left this terrific show wanting more, so much so that I bought the play script (unheard of from this penny-pinching reviewer!)

Cush Jumbo is a star in the making and if you’ve any interest in theatre, in LIFE, go and see this wonderful show.

WHAT: Jospehine and I

WHERE: The Bush Theatre, Uxbridge Road, London

WHEN: Until August 17, various times

TICKETS: £10 & £15

RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes

MORE INFO: CLICK HERE:   

WOULD I SEE IT AGAIN: Yep yep yep

Shakespeare used a neat trick in The Merry Wives of Windsor: he took a well-loved character from a couple of his history plays, dumped him in more prosperous surroundings and waited to see what would happen. Falstaff (Richard Kettles) getting chucked in the Thames in a laundry basket happened. And lo, British farce was born.

Worthing’s own Rainbow Shakespeare, a company which mixes seasoned professional actors with amateur ones,  have taken on the most rumpy pumpy of the Bard’s offerings this summer and done a sterling job with it, making a lovely outdoors evening’s entertainment for these long, sultry nights.

The plot is a bit silly and not one of Shakespeare’s best, but it does tend to make a change from the Much Ado’s and Dreams that abound in the hot weather, and it has just enough meat on its bones to make it a worthwhile project.

Attempting to woo two women at once – and two women who are friends for that matter – is never a good idea, but old letch Falstaff doesn’t really ‘do’ subtle and considered. He’s a man who leaps in at the deep end and invariably comes out smelling of fish.

Rainbow approach it in the spirit of Python, with Slender (Stuart Mortimer) being played like that soppy prince in the tower in Holy Grail, while Gallic doctor Caius (John Paul Elsmore) has an outrrrrageous French accent that would put the Taunters in the same film to shame. I did half expect him to burst out with “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries” but he restrained himself (but you could see it was a close run thing).

Then there’s Ford (Mark Lascelles), one of the gullible husbands who believes his pretty, witty wife is having it off with portly old Falstaff. He’s daffy enough when himself, in fetching bright green tights and wearing a floppy orange frisbee on his head while channelling a petulant Pam Ayres, but when he dons a comedy moustache and bright ginger wig to try to snare his missus and the old pig in the act, he becomes so happily absurd that you expect him to break into a silly walk any minute (it helps that he has the Cleese physique).

All this, plus a pace that goes at a right old lick, makes this Wives a jaunty, fun experience, with Falstaff himself being played by Kettles in the classic manner; big white beard, enormous belly and blustering, bluff delivery, while Rosalie Nickerson’s Mistress Quickly is very ‘ooooh matron’ and flapping hands.

The final Herne the Hunter scene is played out under an intense blue light and is the only time when the actors leave the stage (I wish they’d left it more in the body of the play as the staging is a touch static). The ‘fairies’ gather round a bush, giggling and tinkling, while the haystack Falstaff is duped once again by Shakespeare’s strong women.

So if you’re after your annual dollop of outdoor Bardery, I heartily recommend Rainbow Shakespeare’s lively take on the the Merry Wives. And, unlike a lot of outdoor performances, they don’t mind you taking a chair, so there’s none of this sitting on the floor nonsense which is murder for old bones. Comfort and comedy: now there’s an irresistible combination!

WHAT: The Merry Wives of Windsor

WHERE: Highdown Gardens, Worthing (follow the Littlehampton Road until you see the brown sign)

WHEN: Until July 28 at 7.30pm. Sat & Sun matinees at 2.30pm

TICKETS: £16 (half price for kids)

MORE INFO: http://www.worthingtheatres.co.uk/events-by-date/july/name,110636,en.asp

RUNNING TIME: About two hours

WOULD I SEE IT AGAIN: Yes, preferably in a huge thunderstorm for contrast!

I’ve always been obsessed with the porter in Macbeth. What an oddity he is, stumbling, exploding, ambling, running at full pelt onto the stage – depending on which production you’re seeing – and rambling on about equivocators and the primrose way. He either sets the tone of a production like no other character can, or just sticks out like a sore thumb, as if dumped in the middle of something he has very little to do with.

In actress Eve Best’s directorial debut, the porter is played by veteran drag artiste Bette Bourne who, I’m afraid, falls in the latter camp and has nothing much to do with the rest of the production. That said, Bourne is the most interesting thing in it, made up like a clown complete with red nose, startled eyebrows, and pancake-white make-up, stumbling around drunk but trying hard to retain his poise.

Otherwise, this Jacobean-costumed Macbeth is rather a middling affair, neither great nor gawd blimey bad, which means a pleasant time is to be had at the Globe rather than a startlingly interesting one.

I went to a matinee performance on a sweltering day when half of the groundlings were school kids out on their end of year jolly (or their teacher’s idea of a jolly) so what with their constant cracking of water bottles, the helicopters overhead, and the odd suicidal pigeon, it made for a lively atmosphere.

Joseph Millson makes a beefcake Macbeth, all trimmed black beard and shiny white teeth, but although his delivery’s perfect, he lacks passion until the “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech when suddenly depth appears only to be quickly swallowed up again by frantic action.

Best directs the Scottish play ably and straightforwardly with the only surprise being the humour she brings out in the piece. When Banquo’s ghost (Billy Boyd) marches towards Macbeth along a trestle table, you expect him to put his arms out in front of him and to start doing zombie moans whilst Scooby Doo pops his head up from under the table. The school kids in the audience certainly loved that bit, and every other tension-breaking moment, but after a while the humour was a bit much to take in such a dark play.

Samantha Spiro is a diminutive ball of fury as Lady Macbeth, an out of character part for this actor who’s most usually seen in lighter roles. Her ‘out damned spot’ sleepwalking moment is quietly unnerving. A rasping gasp at every intake of Spiro’s breath is quite disconcerting and I sat there wondering if she smoked heavily or had a wasting lung disease. Spiro and Millson only ever seem to quite gel as a couple when he has his hands round her throat (never a good sign in a marriage).

The set is sparse – the ramparts of a castle in brown and off-white – and the costumes all dun-coloured which adds to the sense of ordinariness that pervades this production, although Olly Fox’s music is rather lively. Pepping things up no end with a rousing pipe and drum accompaniment to the cast’s opening jig (don’t worry: the traditional closing one is there too), the authentic sounding music drives the action forward.

In the end though, I just didn’t believe in Macbeth’s inner life enough and if that fails to grasp the entrails, then the production is really just going through the (albeit very interesting) motions. It is, in a way, the perfect ‘in’ to Shakespeare for kids as there’s an admirably clear line through the play, the dialogue is spoken clearly, the actions match the words, and the humour will keep their interest. Mine just waned.

WHAT: Macbeth

WHERE: The Globe, Bankside, London

WHEN: Various times until October 13

TICKETS: £5 – £39

FOR MORE INFO: CLICK HERE:

RUNNING TIME: two and a half hours

WOULD I SEE IT AGAIN: Yes, but only because it’s the Globe

I think some of the grey heads in the Connaught audience were being scratched at the start of Some Like it Hotter when a bewildered man in an anorak clutching a woman’s make-up box wandered onto the stage with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. Had he just made a wrong turn on the way to the loos?

But no, this was Red Hot Charlie (Patrick Bridgman) and he, like us, was entering the Some Like it Hotter Memorial Experience.“Sorry pal, you’ve kicked the bucket,” cackled Jack Lemmon happily, and off we went.

Turns out that when you cark it, you go to a place between life and wherever you’re destined to end up. This is commonly known as purgatory, but not in this play. Here it’s a party: you get to experience once again the time of your life when you were at your happiest and for Charlie it was watching Some Like it Hot when he was 10 and sitting on the sofa next to dear old mum.

So here he is, in a Chicago speakeasy in 1929 and a shoot-out is about to kick off.

At first, the set up of this gentle comedy musical written by Richard Hurford can appear a little confusing. Does Charlie meet Lemmon, Curtis and Monroe or Jerry, Joe and Sugar or Daphne, Josephine and Sugar? But when you grasp that it’s the Hollywood actors themselves who are stuck in this stairwell to heaven, having to play their most famous creations until, well, they don’t know when, it becomes a little clearer.

And when Charlie first sets eyes upon Marilyn you know that a love story of sorts is going to be involved: one, in fact, that turns out to be rather sweet and poignant and not at all what you’d expect. And boy does Sarah Applewood look like Marilyn.

Set in a crumbling theatre with a broken-down stage, not-so-grand piano, and a sparkling mirror ball, Charlie relives his film fantasy scene by famous scene, while the banter is about life, death, love, fame and his mum. Along the way we get some cracking 1920’s tunes – Sweet Georgia Brown, Yes Sir, That’s My Baby – with the whole cast of six (the main actors plus two on stage stagehands) swinging along on various instruments. The voices are not so hot – more like tepid – but adequate to carry off the task at hand and arthritic toes were tapping and old bodies swaying.

Sometimes Some Like it Hotter moves a little slowly, but it’s never less than charming as Monroe keeps in character for every minute of the 2 hours running time. I was watching her closely from the front row (as you do) and her face never once dropped out of Monroe-mode, not once, and it’s a very difficult mode to keep up, with the face being mobile at all times. No wonder Charlie loved watching her all those years ago. Ah, but there’s that twist again. They have a secret. “Me and Charlie go way back,” breathes Marilyn again and again. But in what way, we wonder.

Daniel Lloyd as Lemmon has that larger than life sense of fun although he doesn’t resemble him at all. He’s got that Daphne chuckle down to a tee though. Paul Matania’s Curtis is more of a look-a-like (although he looks far more like Daniel Radcliffe if anyone ever thought to make him into a stick of rock) and sound-a-like. The Radcliffe look is more pronounced when he appears in the natty naval look as Junior, the Cary Grant of the Riviera.

As laydees, the pair excel, with Matania playing Jerry playing Daphne looking like he/she’s just stepped out of an Aubrey Beardsley drawing, whereas Lloyd as Joe as as Josephine just looks like Terry Scott in a dress. Charlie soon joins them (“I want to catch the train to Florida and dress up in women’s clothes”) in a tasseled flapper dress that barely covers his arse and which made the audience reach for their sunglasses at the sight of his lilywhite legs. He’s having the best fun this side of the doors to heaven.

Apart from versions of the film’s famous scenes, nothing much happens but chat and songs, but the characters come across poignantly and you wish them the ‘happy endings’ they so ardently desire. There’s some very silly humour – apparently Daphne was 25 before she even heard the word ‘pelvis’ and even then she thought it was a wild animal – and a nice bit of irony when they make a long legal speech about how the play has nothing at all to do with the film of the same name.

The twist in the plot isn’t exactly a shocker, but it’s satisfying enough, and fear not: we do, of course, get the funniest last line in film history, plus a couple of songs as encores for good measure.

The night before I went to see Some Like It Hotter, I’d been to the press night of Dirty Dancing in the West End. Guess which one I liked more. Yes, sometimes those little old plays in those little old local theatres that no one but oldies think of going to, have more heart and soul than half a dozen West End shows put together.

WHAT: Some Like It Hotter

WHERE: Connaught Theatre, Worthing

WHEN: Tough luck, you’ve missed it unless it comes round on tour again

WOULD I SEE IT AGAIN: Yes, only I wouldn’t take my mother who’d never seen the film and was a little more bewildered than she usually is