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Author: Brian Butler

Queer East Festival to shine light on queer East and South East Asian film

Posted on by Brian Butler

Lead Pic: Lovebound

Founded in response to the systemic lack of East and South East Asian representation on stage, screen and behind the scenes, the Queer East Festival was formed in 2020 and has earned its place as a premier LGBTQ+ film festival.

Its events this year are across London from 17 – 28 April and then later in the year across the UK. Its programme includes the 20th anniversary screening of Chinese-American romantic comedy Saving Face, and the 50th anniversary screening of the once-considered lost Japanese film Bye Bye Love.

Bye Bye Love

The opening gala at the Barbican screens the coming-of-age A Song Sung Blue (China 2023), which follows 15-year-old Xian as she experiences a summer she will never forget, due to an infatuation with another girl.

The closing gala, at BFI Southbank, features Bye Bye Love, which follows young Utamaro and Giko on a doomed road trip through Japan.

The rest of the festival spans 57 years of film making and 10 countries, including I Am What I Am (Japan 2022), about a young asexual woman in a world where love rules supreme. Saving Face (USA 2024), which explores a complex mother/daughter relationship, where Wil is a lesbian in love with dancer Vivian.

Asog

Asog (Philippines 2023) has documentary and feature film mixed, and it’s billed as a screwball tragi-comedy about typhoon survivor non-binary teacher and comedian Jaya, who tries to win a beauty pageant.

Summer Vacation has androgynous female actors playing boys in a boarding school where a pupil has died.

Sara (Indonesia 2023), which has a stunning performance from trans actress Asha Smara Darra, follows a trans woman returning to her village to attend her father’s funeral.

If It’s With You

If It’s With You (Japan 2023) follows two schoolboys whose relationship develops into something unexpected. Immersive events, workshops and even an event Steamy Intimacies, at Hackney Wick Community Sauna Baths are on the programme. Short films and dance programmes mean this is more than just your standard film season here. 

Ticket information HERE

On stage: Drag Ballet, a hot cleaner in marigolds, Princess Diana resurrected and two gay sauna visits

Posted on by Brian Butler

Drag ballet, a Hollywood legend in the closet, a hot cleaner in marigolds and two gay sauna visits all feature in my latest round-up of queer shows in Brighton and London

Mark Gatiss, the brilliant writer of Sherlock and Dr Who, has put together a series of monologues that chart LGBTQ+ history milestones. Queers, which runs from 11-13 April at Brighton Little Theatre, is funny, tragic and riotous and covers everything from the 1957 milestone Wolfenden Report, to the HIV/AIDS crisis and the debate over the age of consent.

Actor and director Allan Cardew, who recently had a great hit with Brighton’s Alternative Panto, is one of its performers. Tickets HERE

Giselle: Remix

Queer icons Kit Green, Jonny Woo and Lavinia Co-op all make guest appearances during the run of Giselle: Remix at London’s Pleasance Theatre from 10 – 27 April. It’s billed as an evening of drag divinity, cabaret excellence, staggering choreography and jaw-dropping lip sync, created in collaboration with dancers from the Royal Ballet.

Giselle: Remix will be performed to a soundtrack of queer music, including Garland and SOPHIE. And on 20 April there’s a special late night performance with added extras. Tickets HERE

Coming Clean

Coming Clean is Kevin Elyot’s predecessor to his famous My Night With Reg, and plays at the Turbine Theatre until 20 April. Directed by Andrew Beckett, previous boss of the now closed Above The Stag, it’s set in 1982. Greg and Tony live in Kentish Town. They’ve been together for five years and seem to have the perfect relationship. And it’s an open one. Their only rule: never sleep with the same man twice. But then drop dead gorgeous cleaner Robert arrives and the fragile foundations of their sexual commitment are thrown into jeopardy. Tickets HERE

Awkward Productions‘ cult hit comedy Diana: The Untold And Untrue Story returns to London at the King’s Head from 17 April-5 May. It combines drag, multi-media, audience interaction and puppetry to create queer joy in an unforgettable, outrageous, inaccurate and downright fake evening of fun. Writer, director and producer Linus Karp is Diana and co-director Joseph Martin is both Charles and Camilla. It also features the late Queen Elizabeth and even God makes an appearance.

Diana: The Untrue and Untold Story. Credit Dave Bird

I saw it online in lockdown and I laughed out loud at my little iPad screen. It’s hilarious and you won’t feel neutral about it, I can assure you. Tickets HERE

The Tailor-Made Man runs at Covent Garden’s new Stage Door Theatre from 9 May – 3 August on selected dates. Written by Claudio Macor, it’s a powerful true story of the Hollywood studio system in its heyday, its hypocrisy and the star who gave up everything for the man he loved.

William ‘Billy’ Haines, a popular MGM star in the 1920s, was fired by studio boss Louis B Mayer because he was gay. He refused to give up his lifelong partner Jimmie Shields and also refused to marry the silent screen vamp Pola Negri in a sham lavender marriage. Tickets HERE

BILLIE GOLD

Brighton-based cabaret performer Billie Gold asks how far would you go to be good in her one-woman show Praise Kink, which plays at Brighton’s Ironworks Studios as part of Brighton Fringe on 18/19/20 May. She told me: “it’s about finding the power of self-validation and lesbian identity – and it’s not about kink, but it might go a little dirty.” It’s from the mind of a lesbian ex-sex worker, now full-time drag performer. You’ll either be on the edge of your seat or standing on it. Tickets HERE

In May and June you have not one but two shows set in gay saunas to thrill and educate you. Dan Ireland-Reeves is an uncompromising and brilliant actor/director whose monodrama Bleach was a huge success in London and then on tour including Brighton’s Ironworks studios. That gave an insight into a male sex worker whose life and very existence unravelled before our eyes. It was stunning theatre.

Sauna Boy

Now Dan is back, fresh from a tour of Australia and the US to give us his latest piece Sauna Boy, which – as the title suggests – is set in a south coast gay sauna. Dan told me it’s semi-autobiographical and added: “I’m obsessed with sex – well, not the physical act, but I’m obsessed with how it exposes people, their desires, their needs, their inner workings. To know what goes on behind closed doors is endlessly fascinating”. Sauna Boy is at Stage Door Theatre from 29 May – 1 June. Tickets HERE 

Wet Feet runs 18-29 June at London’s Union Theatre. Nathan is an out and proud gay man and Franko is trapped in the shadows of the oppressive legacy of Section 28. They find themselves in an awkward encounter in a gay sauna and as the steam rises on their escapades, a hilarious, heart-warming connection deepens. This is Michael Nero’s debut play. Tickets HERE

Corrie killer takes to Brighton stage

Posted on by Brian Butler

Brighton writer, artist and TV presenter Andrew Kay – best known for his electrifying queer monodrama Morning Glory –  has now called on legendary Coronation Street serial killer Brian Capron (aka Richard Hillman) to star in his latest play Punchline, which will be at Kemptown’s Lantern Theatre from 12-14 April.

Morning Glory starred two prominent Brighton performers – Jason Sutton and Allan Cardew – and Brian is no exception, being a Brighton resident for many years.

Although it’s 20 years since Brian’s soap opera trail of murderous acts, he’s still remembered and recognised and he told me that his TV apperance led to a huge boost in his acting career. The third creative in the team is TV and film director and actor Rupert Charmak, whose short superhero film I Am Super was recently shot in Brighton.

Punchline’s plot concerns an older club entertainer/comedian who bemoans how the comedy scene has changed – a lot for the worse- but beneath this layer of dark humour there lies a disturbing secret in his private life. No spoilers except to say that the play deals with domestic abuse but not in the way you might expect it to.

The play was specifically written for Brian, who saw Morning Glory and asked if Andrew had anything he could perform. The script has evolved over the last year or so and is still changing in rehearsal. Brian told me: “it’s daunting doing a one-man show, but I’ve woven some personal bits from my own life into the lines- some of it is very close to me and my career.”

And what a career – he was a good-natured schoolmaster in Grange Hill and also in Where The Heart Is, but Corrie fame led to many big opportunities, including work at the National Theatre and Guys and Dolls in the West End. In his days in Corrie audiences topped 20 million compared with today’s figure of around six million. His storyline secured Corrie’s first BAFTA award. And Brian didn’t entirely shed his villainous nature, playing baddies regularly in panto.

Brian worked with director Rupert on I Am Super and describes him as  “an actor’s director”. Rupert trod the boards at London’s Globe Theatre and has worked on TV detective series Grace which is mostly filmed in Brighton. He told me: “theatre is still what I love best.”

Tickets for Punchline HERE and look out for my review of the show only in Scene magazine

Clowns, a one-way mirror and the Cuban revolution – that’s Brighton Fringe for you

Posted on by Brian Butler

Queer clowns who think they’re cats, a man in his pants watching the bin man through a one-way mirror, and the folk music of the Cuban revolution – what a launch party for the 2024 Brighton Fringe.

The biggest arts festival in England promises its usual quirky, crazy, annoying mix if its launch is anything to go by. Speaking at the Ironworks Studios, Fringe bosses Amy Keogh and Duncan Lustig-Prean promised excitement and innovation and looked forward to the Fringe’s aspiration to have some activities around the year – not just in May.

Plans are in hand for workshops, mentoring and nursery events to foster emerging talent. But for now the spotlight is on the more than 600 events already announced and mostly on sale and the 100 + venues that will pop up in the city.

Brighton Fringe is proud of its bursaries and awards that allow performers to afford to appear and develop their work: artists like Jonathan Oldfield, whose eclectically funny look on the world is through a one-way mirror in an ex-solicitor’s office which is now his home, he tells us. It’s midnight, Tuesday and as usual he’s in his underpants watching the bin man empty the bins – only this time the bin man winks at him – what’s next, who can tell?

Oceana Bertino-Kavadellas tells the story of her great grandfather and the Cuban revolution of 1958 through song and narration and her high-pitched pure acapella voice is absolutely mesmerising in her show El Viaje.

The queer trio that is Funny Business present A Clown Cabaret, which is a love letter to the absurd, and features two clowns from the London drag scene – Sean the Cheap, and Cabbage the Clown. Expect milk drinking, ABBA played on the recorder and wild free dance.

I’ve started to dive headfirst into the 600-event diary so look out for my preview with my personal and idiosyncratic picks of the Fringe – only in Scene magazine.

Brighton Fringe runs 3 May- 2 June. Full details HERE

FILM REVIEW: Riley

Posted on by Brian Butler

Benjamin Howard, who wrote and directed the film Riley, says it’s based on his own struggle with his sexuality as a US high school football player.

But to my mind this angst-ridden drama doesn’t quite score the points it should. It opens enigmatically with a pretty male teenager – Dakota Riley – hooking up with a much older sex worker in an isolated countryside house. It’s a promising start, as we learn the teen is a footballer, but soon the rough treatment he receives makes him back off and become shouty. It’s not a good omen for him or us.

Immediately we cut to the rigours of football training, with its homoerotic undertones – the toxic masculinity of the locker room, homophobia, insecurity and latent anger and violence.

It could be a heady mix, but somehow we really don’t sympathise with Dakota as he seeks to understand his homosexuality and hide it from team-mates, family and aspiring girlfriend.

He’s exasperating and though clearly into male porn on his phone, keeps telling anyone who will listen that he doesn’t know who he really is.

Added complication comes from his football coach, who is his ex-footballer father, forced to go into coaching after an injury cut short his possibly glittering career. Dakota doesn’t want to just be “Carson’s kid”, but his rebellion is like all his other actions, rather tame.

It’s an interesting theme that Howard explores, but the emotional arc of Dakota’s journey to self-realisation doesn’t seem to be in his own hands. The hooker and the girlfriend are his guides. And the girlfriend’s grandma’s saying “the fullest life is lived in truth”, is the one axiom he eventually seems to be prepared to follow.

Jake Holley, though 10 years older than his character, is totally convincing as the muscular teen with pretty boy looks, who gets involved in soft porn situations with the class gay during “French lessons”, and with his best team buddy, with whom he shares a bedroom and midnight sexual fantasies.

Surprisingly for a film about football, we don’t really see any play, but I guess that might be for budgetary reasons. Instead this is an intimately filmed psychological game of the mind, and worth a viewing despite my reservations.

Riley is being screened at the BFI  LGBTQ+ Flare Film Festival, which opens this week. For screenings CLICK HERE

Spotlight on : the 38th BFI Flare LGBTQ+ London film festival

Posted on by Brian Butler

The 38th BFI Flare London LGBTQ+ film festival runs at the BFI Southbank from 13-24 March and online at BFI Player ,and there’s lots to see in its three themed sections, Hearts, Bodies and Minds. There’s a staggering total of 33 world premieres, 57 features and 81 shorts from 41 countries.

I just had a tiny toe in its water to give a hint of the goodies in store. Under its theme Bodies, is Backspot. Riley begins to crumble under pressure when she and her girlfriend are selected for an elite cheerleading squad. Departing Seniors is a tongue-in-cheek Queer remix of slasher films. Making it to graduation is the least of these high school students’ problems with a murderer in their midst.

I Don’t Know Who You Are features a young gay man who races against time to get funds for HIV prevention treatment, following a sexual assault. Love Lies Bleeding is Rose Glass’s gripping and gory follow-up to St Maud. It finds a lesbian couple drawn into a web of violence in 1980’s small-town New Mexico.

Riley is a powerful revelation of Dakota Riley’s secret gay life which threatens to destroy him and his star-playing football career. Slow tells the story of Dovydas and Elena, who form a strong connection, but when Dovydas reveals he is asexual, everything changes.

The Summer With Carmen is a seductive and smart gay comedy on a cruisy Greek island. In Tops, it’s the hilarious Trans 1990’s  breakfast tv show you didn’t know you wanted.

We Are Perfect takes us to an open audition for a rare Trans masculine role, which attracts 300 candidates. It uncovers raw talent and revolutionary spirit. In the Shorts section of the festival I found Connect/Disconnect. The first few seconds of an encounter can surprise and unsettle.

Cosmic Dreams: Through The Looking Glass has techno-sexual deviants, pixelated dolphins and sensuous goddesses, who all reside in the queer multiverse. Pleasure Me is is a set of short films exploring queer sex and desire. There’s beauty, frustration, joy and heartbreak.

Check out the full programme at bfi.org.uk and if you subscribe to BFI Player you can get an online selection of the festival too.

A look at phenomenal, new queer theatre – from Cowboys and Lesbians to 52 Monologues for Young Transexuals and FutureQueer

Posted on by Brian Butler

As LGBT+ History Month comes to a close, there are some excellent productions by queer theatre-makers to look forward to.

FutureQueer has its last performance at the new King’s Head Theatre studio space on 2 March. It’s said to be sold out but check the box office. I’m sure that the multi-talented Alexis Gregory’s look at queer life in the distant future,with a strong emphasis on Donna Summer, will make another bow before long.

Also at the King’s Head, Turning The Screw returns after a successful run at New Wimbledon Theatre’s studio in 2022. It examines the role of power, the vulnerable and saying no to a closeted cultural icon of the time. Centre stage is the life of classical composer Benjamin Britten as he grapple with his homosexuality, while composing the opera The Turn Of The Screw.

Turning The Screw

Britten persuades the young star of the opera into the home he shares with singer Peter Pears, with dramatic consequences for all three men. It’s written by Kevin Kelly and directed by actor/singer/producer/director Tim McArthur. Tickets HERE

Cowboys and Lesbians runs at Park Theatre in Finsbury Park, London till 9 March. This Edinburgh Fringe smash hit is a modern day love story about two sarcastic teenagers, taking Hollywood’s typical first love cliches and flipping them on their head, creating a different kind of rom com. It’s written and directed by Billie Esplen. Tickets HERE

52 Monologues for Young Transexuals

52 Monologues for Young Transexuals runs at Soho Theatre from 4-16 March. This queer cabaret dives into the raw realities of discovering oneself as a trans woman, in all its messy, painful and honest glory – covering pagan ritual, Streisand, BDSM, spit and skepta. The show veers from lip syncing to audience participation, comedy routines, and a moving monologue on motherhood. Tickets HERE

Frank’s Closet, the cult hit musical, returns to London at the Union Theatre in Southwark from 6-30 March. The show was the Off-West End hit of 2009. It resurfaces with new material by writer/composer Stuart Wood and director Sasha Regan.

Frank teeters on the precipice of marriage to Alan, who’s given Frank an ultimatum: he must give up the toys and joys of being single and donate his fabulous collection of the dresses of iconic divas to the V & A Museum.

Frank retreats from reality through the magic portal of his closet door, where the divas visit him in turn and give varying degrees of reliable advice. Will the frocks or the fiancée triumph? Andy Moss is Frank and Luke Farrugia plays the divas. I’m guessing this is high camp entertainment that ‘s not to be missed. Tickets HERE

Coming soon: my round up of the best of this year’s BFI Flare Film Festival, a delve into the world of sex workers and the stage, and a preview of the LGBTQ+ Iris Film Festival as it visits Brighton. All in Scene magazine.

REVIEW: Cinderella Re-mixed – the Brighton Alternative Pantomime

Posted on by Brian Butler

Welcome back to Brighton’s long-standing alternative pantomime, with a fizzing, high-octane, raucous and filthily funny re-imagining of the Cinderella story.

Boasting four top-line drag artists and high-class singing soloists, this show is a joy, going back to basics and the traditional look and feel of the pantomime genre.

We’re in Brightonville, where we the audience are the villagers and we’re called upon numerous times to join in the fun. With a death-defying feat of imaginative casting, the brilliant Jason Sutton (aka Miss Jason) is our teenage virgin Cinders, looking for love.

And he comes along of course in the form of high tenor Jason Lee, though Duke’s Mound may not be the best choice of a courting place. Jason, as the Duke of Sussex, has his trusty companion to rely on – played with camp relish by another great vocalist – Allan Jay.

And of course there are the usual obstacles – the formidably evil Baroness Birdcage (Wain Douglas, aka Kara Van Park), whose moment in the spotlight comes at the Royal Pavilion Ball with a rip-roaring rendtion of When You’re Good To Mama.

There’s more drag royalty as the step-sisters – Sandra and Baroness Mary Golds – get the best of the frocks and constantly interact with somewhat surprised audience members.

Billie Gold is a shimmering, smiling Fairy Gold, pitch perfect in vocals and beautifully eloquent in her rhyming couplets. And Alfie Ordinary is the crowd pleaser as Butters, full of energy, laughs and inclusiveness. Luke Nunn and Rowan Newsome leap and spin as two very agile and delightful dancers, and oh the joy of a live band – Shaz D and Thomas Earl.

Paul Lawrence directs his own script and he and choreographer Joey Bethell fill the small stage with constant movement, clever action, and there’s even a revolve!

Producer Allan Cardew has brought back a much-loved friend and he and the creative team have given us West End production values – no mean feat! And they’ll be back next year with Jack and the Beanstalk – you can even book now.

Cinderella Re-mixed is at Ironworks Studios, Brighton until January 28, tickets HERE.

Cult ’70s queer novel gets stage outing this week

Posted on by Brian Butler

The London premiere of The Faggots And Their Friends Between Revolutions gets its outing at London’s Southbank Centre from January 25 – 28.

Produced by Factory International, and adapted for the stage by composer Philip Venables, it’s billed as a blend of opera, theatre and dance as it explores fables and myths, drawing on the classic 1977 cult novel by Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta. It’s filled with battle re-enactments, all-night raves, lute songs and court dances.

The cast perform double or triple roles with instruments, acting as singers, narrators and dancers to conjure a world on the brink of revolution, and a joyful celebration of a world through a queer lens. Both radical and playful, it’s described as an anarchic bedtime story.

I can unpack the title and the original storyline as follows: we are transported to the declining empire of ruler Ramrod, where those in charge are “the men” – a patriarchal society. The faggots of the title are gay men, who live communally, produce art, have sex and await the next revolution.

Their ‘friends’ include ‘the strong women’ (feminists), ‘the queens” – drag stars, ‘the women who love women’ – lesbians, and ‘the faeries’ – the radicals, and there are also ‘the queer men’, who are gay men who are closeted, or who have been assimilated into the patriarchal society.

Lots of food for thought there, folks. Look out for a review of the show coming soon in Scene. The show is at the Queen Elizabeth Hall: tickets HERE

REVIEW: ‘Afterglow’ – Southwark Playhouse

Posted on by Brian Butler

To quote Woody Allen, quoting poet Emily Dickinson: “the heart wants what the heart wants.” And that’s the dilemna at the centre of S. Asher Gelman’s marvellous play Afterglow, which gets a second production after its original outing at Southwark Playhouse pre-Covid..

Though the concept of polyamory has gained more acceptance, the play still shocks and the audience on the night I saw it, oohed and aahed and had sharp intakes of breath at key revelations.

The basic premise seems straightforward: it’s possible to love two men at the same time in different ways. Alex (Victor Hugo) and Josh (Peter McPherson) open the play as an apparently happily married couple living in Manhattan and awaiting the birth of their surrogate baby.

Josh is the instigator of the chaos and heartbreak that ensues when he invites male masseur Darius (James Nicholson) to join them for a threesome. What develops, as inevitably as a Greek tragedy, is an uneven playing field of sex, love, affection, dissatisfaction, need and jealousy that unravels the three lives.

There are nude scenes aplenty in this new version directed by the writer himself and based on his own life experiences. But the choreography has now become a major feature of the action and the sex scenes are balletic as well as sensual, without a hint of prurience or inappropriateness.

Yes, there’s plenty of eye candy, but the thought processes in the storyline are far more interesting – honest! Victor Hugo brilliantly portrays Alex’s growing uneasiness with the relationships, and a spiralling sense of inequality and separation from his husband. McPherson is far more visceral, driven by sexual energy, and then unable to cope with the consequences.

There is a mesmerising moment when he sits naked, cross-legged on a table under a shower cascading beautifully lit water on his head and is lost to the reasoning world. Jamie Roderick’s lighting is stunning throughout and Ann Beyesdorfer’s simple but ever-changing set design adds momentum to the spiralling plot.

James Nicholson gives us a delightfully camp and naive Darius who is equally damaged by the fallout and feels that reaching 25 is a major milestone in life.

The ending, when it comes after 90 minutes, is sharp, sudden and thoroughly believable. What I left the theatre wondering was: “what happens in six months or a years’ time?” Sequel please, Mr Gelman.

Aftergow runs at Southwark Playhouse until February 10. Tickets HERE

Photography by The Other Richard

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