Venues in Brighton & Hove and London have a great menu over the next couple of months!
The Theatre Royal (June 19) has the wonderful Elesha Paul Moses, who started her singing career at the Old Black Horse in Rottingdean, in What’s Love Got To Do With It – a Tina Turner tribute show.
Global phenomenon, the rock musical SIX, returns to Brighton’s Theatre Royal from July 19-23, with feisty, raunchy songs from the six wives of Henry VIII. It’s an absolutely sensational night. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, based on the film, finds a group of UK pensioners in India – what could possibly go wrong? It stars Rula Lenska and Paul Nicholas, and runs September 20-24.
Local singing sensation Jason Lee embarks on a new career path with his own show at the Old Market in Hove on June 30. Jason has performed everywhere from Ronnie Scott’s to the Far East, but now appears with a full orchestra to give us the best of Broadway and the West End, and re-imagines some iconic pop hits.
Moving to London, Brasserie Zedel‘s Crazy Coqs cabaret room has that great comic invention Miss Hope Springs (aka Ty Jeffries) returning with scandalous showbiz stories and your favourite musical numbers on July 23 and September 16.
Also at the Crazy Coqs (July 25), actor/writer Alexis Gregory offers another chance to see his amazing Riot Act. He interviewed three LGBTQ+ rights activists for the show – a Stonewall Riots survivor, an alternative ’70s drag artist and a ’90s AIDS activist. He brings all three to life in a true chronicle of our times that is both dark and very funny.
Diva! Live From Hell is a one-person musical, inspired by the classic Bette Davis movie, All About Eve. It’s at the Turbine Theatre in Battersea from August 17 – September 3 and stars Luke Bayer (Everybody’s Talking About Jamie).
Finally two startling pieces of queer film and TV drama. Cult film-maker Bruce LaBruce never fails to shock and Saint-Narcisse is no exception. Its outrageous and provocative storyline follows Dominic, a young man with a fetish for… himself. It’s a complex web of incest, beauty, religion, death and redemption. Don’t miss it. It’s on DVD and digital – more information HERE.
Go to BBC iplayer to catch BBC 4’s recent airing of Prisoner C33, which stars Toby Stephens in Stuart Paterson’s wonderfully written drama, directed by Trevor Nunn. Playwright Oscar Wilde is confined in Reading Gaol. His younger self visits him and the two men wrestle with the humiliation of his fall from celebrity to convict because he loved another man. It’s an absolutely stunning performance.