THEGAYUK

Author: Tim Baros

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Haram Iran

    THEATRE REVIEW | Haram Iran

    ★★★★★ | Haram Iran

    CREDIT: Above The Stag
    CREDIT: Above The Stag

    Two young men were publicly hanged in a square in Mashhad, Iran on 19th July 2005. The new play Haram Iran tells this horrific story.

    Ayaz Marhoni and Mahmoud Asgari were both teenage boys who liked to hang out together. But it was suspected that these two young men had a homosexual affair, though the true nature of their crime had never actually been confirmed. But they were publicly executed after being convicted on the trumped up charges of raping a 13-year old boy.

    The Above the Stag theatre in Vauxhall has produced a play that re-enacts and tries to give credence and understanding to the story of these two young men, and their lives, and their execution. It’s an amazing and relevant play.

    Ayaz (Viraj Juneja) and Mahmoud (Andrei Costin) play ball, study together and hang out at Ayaz’s house. They’re fast becoming good friends, enough so that it makes Fareed (Merch Husey) jealous. Mahmoud spends a lot of time at Ayaz’s house, in his bedroom, just hanging out. Ayaz is obsessed with books, books that his mother (Silvana Malmone) has illegally kept as she’s not allowed to have them because of Sharia law.

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    Ayaz is most enraptured by The Catcher in the Rye, and he reads passages of the book to Mahmoud. Some of the passages are sexual, making the young men a bit turned on. One day Ayaz notices huge marks on Mahmoud’s back, caused by whippings inflicted on him by his father. Ayaz rubs oil on Mahmoud’s back, but it’s this act, witnessed by Fareed, which causes their downfall. Ayaz is initially charged with corrupting, and penetrating Mahmoud, is thrown in jail, and repeatedly raped by the prison guard (Fanos Xenofos). Eventually they are both charged with consensual homosexual acts and the judge (George Savvides) punishes them to death.

    ALSO READ: Gay Air France flight attendants fear for their lives if forced to travel to newly opened route to Iran

    Haram Iran is a hugely important play that highlights the brutality and injustice that these two young innocent men endured in Iran. While not every scene in Haram Iran might not have actually taken place, what is fact is the murder at the hands of the Iranian government of these two young men.

    Directed by Gene David Kirk with brutal and emotional intensity, Haram Iran was written by Lawyer Jay Paul Deratany, who happened to find the story online. And each member of the cast are excellent. Juneja and Costin are both very believable as Ayez and Mahmoud, young and innocent but punished nonetheless. Maimone as Ayaz’s mother is superb in her role. Xenofos is very scary (and a bit too believable) as the prison guard who shows no mercy, while and Savvides is downright cold, mean and heartless as the judge.

    Haram Iran is a brutal yet delicate story of two young men who didn’t deserve to die because of who they were.

    Haram Iran plays at Above The Stag until the 1st May 2016

  • FILM REVIEW | Boulevard

    FILM REVIEW | Boulevard

    ★★★★ | Boulevard

    A 65-year old man in great conflict makes a life changing decision in the new film ‘Boulevard.’

    The late Robin Williams is bank branch manager Nolan Mack. He’s literally just going through life’s motions – working at a bank, with a longtime wife (Kathy Baker) and a very sick father in the hospital. Then one late evening after visiting his father, he drives through a derelict part of town and almost runs over a young man, Leo (Roberto Aguire), who turns out to be a male prostitute. Nolan checks to make sure Leo is fine, then out of the blue, invites him to go to a motel. This chance meeting opens up something inside Nolan who perhaps realised but didn’t accept that he has feelings for other men. While his relationship with Leo becomes more involved and more complicated, Nolan starts giving Leo money and starts acting like a surrogate father. Their relationship is not sexual but it’s intimate. Nolan tries and tries to his hide his encounters with Leo from his wife and his best friend Winston (Bob Odenkirk), but as Nolan becomes more and more involved and emotionally tied to Leo, his wife suspects that something is going on. But eventually Nolan comes to the realisation that Leo does not feel the same way about him, but at this point it appears that Leo’s life will never be the same again.

    Williams gives a delicate performance as the lonely and subdued Nolan. He’s a man whose conflicted, despondent and depressed until Leo comes into his life. Shot in 2013 in Nashville, Tennessee, Williams would eventually hang himself a year later. This story of a lonely and depressed man is eerily parallel to William’s life. Baker, known mostly for her parts on television, is very good as Nolan’s wife, who knows her 40-year marriage is slipping away and there’s nothing she can do to about it.

    Aguire more than holds his own against seasoned veteran Williams, their scenes together are both calm and gentle.

    Director Dito Montiel (2013’s Empire State) does a great job in getting great performances from his cast, with a good script by Douglas Soesbe. But it’s Williams performance that will stay with you for a long time as it’s one of his last, ever.

    11 Things You Need To Know About Boulevard – Robin Williams’ last ever film… Posted by The Gay UK on Saturday, 9 April 2016

  • THEATRE REVIEW | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

    ★★★★ |  Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. It’s not your usual type of play.

    CREDIT: Supplied

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  • THEATRE REVIEW | Miss Atomic Bomb

    ★★ | Miss Atomic Bomb

    It’s a bomb that goes off during the production of ‘Miss Atomic Bomb.’ It’s not an actual bomb but a stink and sink bomb.

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  • FILM REVIEW | Marguerite

    FILM REVIEW | Marguerite

    ★★★★

    An aristocrat who thinks she can sing but really can’t is the new French film Marguerite.

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  • London’s LGBT Film Festival, Flare Is Underway

    London’s LGBT Film Festival, Flare Is Underway

    Flare turns 30 this year. And what is Flare you might ask? It’s London’s LGBT Film Festival. Flare starts on Wednesday March 16th and continues up until Sunday March 27th. That’s ten jam-packed days of films, seminars, parties, and just plain lots of fun!The Pass

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  • THEATRE REVIEW | Land of our Fathers

    THEATRE REVIEW | Land of our Fathers

    Six miners wait to be rescued in the brutal and powerful ‘Land of our Fathers.’

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  • FILM REVIEW | James White

    FILM REVIEW | James White

    ★★★★ James White | Amazing performances and a very original story make ‘James White’ a must see film.

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  • FILM REVIEW | Freeheld

    FILM REVIEW | Freeheld

    ★★ Freeheld | A dying female police officer struggles to get her benefits passed on to her female domestic partner in the new film ‘Freeheld.’

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  • FILM REVIEW | How To Be Single

    FILM REVIEW | How To Be Single

    ★★ How to be Single | Not a film for you if you’re ready to mingle.

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  • FILM REVIEW | Dirty Grandpa

    Both DeNiro and Efron star in the new rude, crude, and obscene film ‘Dirty Grandpa’. ★

    We are ‘treated’ to seeing Robert DeNiro (as perverted frisky and unsexed Grandpa Dick Kelly – get it?) masturbate to an interracial pornography video the day after the funeral of his wife who he was with for 40 years.

    We also get to see Effon’s (James Kelly) brother pouring beer over his dead grandmother’s coffin, Efron wearing a bee thong with his arse out in the open (several times), which at one point comes off causing him to expose himself to a little boy, while simulation with the assumption of oral sex between the two (I’m not kidding here) and an endless, and I mean endless, supply of cock jokes, and cocks (one scene has Effron and DeNiro sharing a bed together in which DeNiro sleeps naked, and the next moment there is a penis in his face supposedly to be Grandpa’s).

    This is not to mention scenes of Efron in jail with a fellow cellmate feeling him up, the one gay character in the movie being made fun of because he is gay, two inept police officers who all but ignore the town’s drug dealer (Adam Pally) who happens to shoot guns in his tourist a/k/a drug shop, and an extremely horny young woman (Zoey Deutch) who has way too much sex talk with DeNiro.

    It all adds up to one dirty, and bad movie. The plot is this: after the death of his wife, Grandpa Kelly wants to head down to his condo in Florida, so he tricks grandson Jason into driving him down there, much to the dismay of Jason’s fiance Meredith (Julianne Hough), who’s he about to marry and with the wedding rehearsal just days away. On the way Grandpa and Grandson run into Grandson’s ex-schoolmate Lenore (Aubrey Plaza), with the aforementioned horny Shadia (Deutch) and the gay camp Tyrone (Brandon Mychal Smith) in tow.

    Shadia’s got the hot hots for Grandpa (to tick one of her ‘must do’ boxes) and Lenore will realize that she’s got the hots for Jason. It’s a road trip that ends in most of the character’s lives changed, as well as the audiences. You will walk out shaking your head and vow to never see a Zac Efron (and possibly a Robert DeNiro) film ever again. Thanks to Director Dan Mazer (The Dictator) and writer John Phillips for taking Efron and DeNiro to new lows in their careers.