Looking on the bright side of lockdown 2020, we got the amazingly varied all-weekend tv streaming offering of We Are Fabuloso- a virtual replacement for this years’ Brighton Pride.
A few hundred words here can’t do justice to the glittering array of talent , from specially recorded studio performances to archive footage of the last half-dozen Pride parades and star turns on the Preston Park stage. Zoe Lyons and Stephen Bailey anchored the whole thing from their own tv studio and kept the pace up.
To get us warmed up there was cheeky glitter drag prince Alfie Ordinary giving us Keep On Moving.
Kathy Caton interviewed local MPs about what Pride meant to them and the tone was set for 3 nights of a very mixed menu of music, fun, and serious discussions featuring the many LGBTQ+ organisations who benefit from Pride via the grants of the Rainbow Fund.
The wonderful comic talent that is Rosie Jones was on for far too short a time, and her virtual love affairs with Jodie Comer and Gillian Anderson were hilarious. Joy Crooker gave us a Billie Holliday sound-alike rendition of Anyone But Me .
A powerful video about hate crime around the world brought us back down to basics about rights and equality, including the torture, execution and imprisonments in countries like Russia, Kenya, Indonesia and Mauritius.
Throughout the weekend were very brief glimpses of the many Pride stage acts there have been over the recent years – including Sister Sledge, the Pet Shop Boys, Ms Dynamite and Hazel Dean.
Several studio highlights were stand-out for me – Lascel Wood singing Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This, Katherine Elli’s powerful vocals to Ty Jeffries( aka Miss Hope Springs) heart-warming composition A Little Bit Of Hope. One if not all Brighton’s LGBTQ+ choirs should sing this.
Sarah Savage and Fox Fisher gave powerful testimonies about the need for trans rights, and poet Alice Denny gave a moving, tearful tribute to our late editor James Ledward.
Another comic highlight was Hanna Brackenbury and her very funny lesbian lament We Are Never getting Cats.
Spread over two nights Lola Lasagne managed to keep control of the likes of Kara Van Park, Mary Mac and Rose Garden in a quick-fire quiz Drag Juice. And then we had the phenomenon that is Joe Black – looking every inch Norma Desmond and unbelievably giving us a Kurt Weill rendition of George Formby’s When I’m Cleaning Windows .
