Cocoon is a true depiction of the trials and triumphs of female adolescence, a coming-of-age tale that every woman can relate to.
In the heat of a shimmering Berlin summer, Nora (Lena Urzendowsky) spends her days as a third wheel to her older sister Jule (Lena Klenke) and her best friend Aylin (Elina Vildanova). They think and talk only of boys and how to keep thin, whilst wandering the vibrant city streets taking selfies and juvenile social media videos. Feeling the pressures to fit in, Nora goes along with her sister’s frolics – drinking, smoking and playing ‘smack the finger’ with the boys. But with their alcoholic mother largely absent, it is Jule who bears the brunt of Nora’s supervision. Nora looks up to Jule but still keeps and cares for caterpillars, an activity she and her mother once shared.
On a gym day at school, Nora gets her period for the first time in front of the class – one embarrassing step too far for Jule. When older student Romy rushes to Nora’s rescue, a friendship blossoms and Nora falls fast in love for the first time. But as the hottest summer on record comes to a close, things will never be the same for Nora – the butterfly has emerged from her cocoon.
The show, which stars Andrew Lancel, will open at Liverpool’s Unity Theatre for six performances over three nights, this will be the first live performances at the theatre since closing in March due to the on-going coronavirus pandemic.
The show then moves on to The Atkinson Southport, Lighthouse Poole, Swan Theatre Worcester, Belgrade Coventry, Dukes Lancaster, City Varieties Leeds, and Capitol Horsham. All venue will present to socially distanced audiences and more dates are to be confirmed soon.
Swan Song was first staged at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1997, before transferring to Hampstead Theatre with award-winning comedy actress Rebecca Front in the lead role. Jonathan Harvey adapted the 70-minute play especially for Liverpool Theatre Festival for Andrew Lancel to play the solo role of Dave Titswell. Due to critical acclaim, the play will now perform at venues across the UK next year, these new dates replaced the November 2020 dates which were cancelled due to lockdown, now a longer tour is planned for Spring 2021.
The news also comes as Andrew Lancel is set to have an appearance in the Royal Variety Performance, which is televised on Tuesday 8 December. Andrew appears as Brian Epstein in Cilla The Musical, he also played Brian in Epstein The Man Who Made The Beatles in 2012, where Andrew Lancel first met Bill Elms who produced the play in Liverpool and London’s West End.
“Funny, clever and inspiring production”
Producer and the artistic director of Liverpool Theatre Festival, Bill Elms said: “Swan Song is a funny, clever and inspiring production which opened the inaugural Liverpool Theatre Festival. Andrew Lancel, Jonathan Harvey, and Noreen Kershaw are an incredible blend of creative talent, and the play went down a storm in Liverpool. It is such a lovely piece that I approached Andrew and the team with the idea to tour. People are excited for the return of live theatre – and we’re excited to give them that experience back after such a long time with a really special production.”
Swan Song is a bittersweet comedy written by Jonathan Harvey. Set in Liverpool, it is Christmas 1997, the world is changing and in the staff room, Gay, forty-something, English teacher Dave Titswell finds that not all change is welcome. He has a crush, but life, love, and work are never straight forward for Dave. Will a school trip to The Lakes change things for the better, or make things decidedly worse? Swan Song will make audiences laugh, but equally pull at the heartstrings. Everyone knows someone like Dave – or could even be a Dave themselves.
Ⓒ DAVID MUNN PR SUPPLIED
Andrew Lancel is no stranger to audiences. Well established on the national theatre scene, Andrew is also widely known for his television roles as DI Neil Manson in The Bill and super-villain Frank Foster in Coronation Street. He has twice played Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein on stage to great critical acclaim, first in Epstein – The Man Who Made The Beatles (also produced by Bill Elms) which premiered in Liverpool and went on to play London’s West End, as well as playing Epstein in the national tour of Cilla The Musical, Bill Kenwright’s stage adaptation of the TV series written by Jeff Pope.
AndrewLancelcommented: “The last play I saw before lockdown was Jonathan Harvey’s Our Lady of Blundellsands at The Everyman Liverpool, which I loved – so it’s very cool, and a little ironic, that my first play back is with Jonathan. We have known each other for years and worked together a lot but never on stage, so it’s humbling that he has adapted this play for me. It’s very funny, moving, and I think people will really relate to it today. His characters are literally gifts to play and to watch.
“This play is about reuniting too. Reuniting theatre and audiences with live performance is extra special. To be back with Epstein producer Bill Elms is a buzz, and I’ve worked on some very serious storylines on Corrie with Noreen Kershaw. It feels like coming home for us all in so many ways.”
Award-winningJonathan Harvey’s credits include Gimme Gimme Gimme; Murder Most Horrid;Coronation Street; Call The Midwife; and Tracey Ullman’s Show. Hisplays include Beautiful Thing, Corrie, Canary, Hushabye Mountain, Babies, Boom Bang A Bang’ and Rupert Street Lonely Hearts Club. He also wrote the 2001 stage musical Closer to Heaven with the Pet Shop Boys and its sequel Muzik. He has won the John Whiting Award, the George Devine Award, two Manchester Evening News Awards, an Evening Standard Award, two British Soap Awards and a Writers Guild of Great Britain Award.
Jonathan added: “Swan Song is a comedy about a teacher who’s trying to hold onto his dignity while the education system crumbles around him – and I’m thrilled Andrew is playing Dave. I’m delighted to also be working with Noreen again, she directed many of my Corrie scripts and my last episode of Call The Midwife. As the original Shirley Valentine, Noreen definitely knows a thing or two about one person shows.”
Noreen Kershaw’s directing credits include Our Girl, Moving On, Scott & Bailey, Emmerdale, Shameless, Heartbeat and Coronation Street. She is also known for acting in Life On Mars, Brookside, and Watching. Noreen also originated the title role of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre.
Robert seems to have it all but in reality, he doesn’t. His fate is revealed in the new hard-hitting play GH Boy.
Now playing at the Charing Cross Theatre until December 20th Robert (Jimmy Essex) has the perfect boyfriend in Sergio (Marc Bosch). Sergio is young, cute, fun and just adores Robert – who in Sergio’s eyes can’t do no wrong. Robert also has an understanding mom (now played by Nicola Sloane after Buffy Davis injured herself), a very good friend in Jasminder (Anryana Ramkhalawon) and an understanding therapist (Devesh Kishore). But Robert hides a secret – he’s way over his head in East London’s party scene (party = drugs).
Meanwhile, there are whispers of a gay serial killer who entices gay men with promises of drugs, drugs, and more drugs. Robert desperately wants to leave the scene behind him and to enjoy his engagement with the adorable Sergio – but Robert can’t seem to escape the clutch on drugs – and this might just lead to a rendevous with the serial killer who seems about to snare Robert into his dangerous web.
GH Boy tackles the misconceptions around gay culture and promiscuity and questions why gay men like Robert are drawn to this scene to the point of self-destruction in this show by debut playwright Paul Harvard.
Originally supposed to run at The Vaults earlier this year but cancelled due to COVID 19 – catch it now while you can before possible tier 3 restrictions come into effect.
One of music’s most iconic artists, Boy George, has released a new song with Israeli rapper Asaf Goren – listen here. ‘Rainbow in the Dark’ touches on themes of unity, LGBT+ rights and the freedom to be oneself. The pandemic’s lockdown has allowed the singer/songwriter the space to explore creatively; this release with Asaf Goren is the first of many exciting collaborations he’s been working on during this time.
Boy George is one of the world’s most influential, universally loved artists, best known as the lead singer of decade-defining, Grammy award-winning group, Culture Club. He has racked-up numerous top ten hits in the UK and across the globe. On 19th December, Boy George and Culture Club will take over The SSE Arena, Wembley for ‘Rainbow in the Dark’, a globally live-streamed show.
Earlier this year, Boy George unveiled new album This Is What I Dub, Vol. 1, the first body of work to be released independently via his own label, BGP (Boy George Presents). A piece of his visual artwork, entitled ‘When Things Get Dark Look For The Light Switch’, was sold as part of the #ArtForHeroes campaign, where donations exceeded £1millon for the UK’s NHS heroes during the coronavirus pandemic.
Asaf Goren is an upcoming Israeli rapper, dancer and personality, known for The Challenge MTV and So You Think You Can Dance. He has an international following after winning Israel’s Big Brother and is quickly growing his resume in the states. Goren had reached out to Boy George with his work. After being completely inspired by what he heard, Boy George suggested they worked together on a new song.
What has literally lasted 40 years, started with a Swahili song, made with different collaborators and producers, gone on to make 11 albums to date, have an entry in the Guinness Book of Records, looks to have no signs of slowing down and in my eyes at least, the envy of many groups?
Bananarama that is what. 2020 has been a funny year and to help while away the time, Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward sat down to write their story and what a story.
It’s a blanket and PJ book for a cold day. Written in a style that reads as though the girls are with you for a cozy chat about the past and present, it starts before they even knew they would be famous or forge an enviable back catalogue of music and memories. To top this there is also a friendship that makes you the reader both happy and wishful that you too can have one as close as this. Some of it captured in 47 pages of pictures.
Coming from a time before the internet gave you “access all areas” of a celebrities life, it was quite shocking to read that Keren was pregnant during the True Confessions album. I can’t proclaim to be a super fan, to be honest, personal details of celebrities I admire the most don’t really both me, so this was a surprise to me. And the revelations kept coming.
Along the way we had snippets of time where the girls would mingle and hang out with the likes of the late George Michael and Keith Flint. All stories affectionately told. It’s a glimpse into the life they have as pop royalty.
The warts-n-all come with Keren confessing about her struggle with mental health. She has been been surrounded by it since childhood with her own mother suffering badly from it at a time when there were no self-help books or support groups.
They talk about their struggles from bedsit living to the glamour of getting a council flat where they held a brief conversation with Robert DeNiro before agreeing to meet him. And the struggles of not really being taken seriously.It’s easy to dismiss girl groups in the male dominated industry and this topic is mentioned throughout the book. And you can be forgiven for thinking that they just turned up and sang songs. Delve in deeper and you discover they are more than pretty musical things. Bananarama write most of their songs.
What is apparent is the almost absence of mentioning Siobhan Fahey and Jacquie O’Sullivan. Not really a criticism because when you strip back the banana skin, Bananarama has been a 2 piece girl group for 30 years. Hard to really compute that they were only a 3 piece for 1 decade. It’s in this book that for me as a reader, my mind is blown away. You simply forget they are a 2 piece.
So is this a book about the end? Not a chance. At 58 and 59 respectively, the Banana’s give zero hints that they will be hanging up the microphones soon and personally I’m glad about that. I’m quite sure they really have something more to say. Book 2? I suspect so. In the meantime, you need to read this one first.
‘Tis the season to be Queer. The crème de la crème of London’s Queer cabaret groups are taking over the Pleasance this December for a festive celebration of London’s renowned drag, cabaret, and performance scene. This year the venue welcomes a diverse representation of the LGBTQ+ community, with drag kings, queens and gender non-conforming artists all taking to the stage.
Following on from two acclaimed residencies at the Pleasance with Sink The Pink, Ginger Johnson is back for an evening of camp laughs, filthy looks, and all the usual shiny shit you’ve come to expect from Pleasance’s own Christmas tree angel. All-female and non-binary theatre and cabaret company Pecs Drag Kings visit Pleasance for the first time with Pecs: Christmas Queer before the one and only Cocoa Butter Club promise to decolonise and remoisturise in a brand-new Christmas revue, Gifted. Acclaimed pan-Asian collective The Bitten Peach will bring the festivities to a close and enchant audiences with their Bedtime Stories
Embracing the new normal, the venue has transformed its main house into London’s most exciting, socially distanced comedy, theatre and cabaret space. The new three-tier auditorium will welcome 100 people a night when it reopens in November, bringing the spirit of the Fringe back to London.
The venue will follow up-to-date safety regulations with e-ticketing, enhanced cleaning and table service using the app Butlr to provide drinks as well as new pizzas from neighbours The Depot. The auditorium will open one hour before each performance to give audiences time to settle in and enjoy some pre-show drinks ensuring you can spend your whole evening at the venue in style. A trip to the Pleasance promises to be a fun and safe night out.
Anthony Alderson, Director of Pleasance Theatre Trust, comments, I’m thrilled that we are re-opening the London space and managing to bring theatre back to London audiences. We have put strict hygiene and cleanliness protocols in place and are making sure that your visit to the Pleasance is as safe as possible. The artists we work with are at the heart of what we do and this re-opening season is all about bringing back that undefinable Fringe spirit that embodies all of us.
London’s Queer cabaret collectives take over Pleasance Islington this festive season
Pleasance Theatre, Carpenters Mews, London N7 9EF Wednesday 11th November – Tuesday 22nd December 2020
The programme is as follows:
Ginger Johnson presents
Ginger Johnson’s Christmas Egg
8th – 9th December 2020
Join Newcastle’s sweetheart and some of her most ridiculous cabaret pals for an evening of camp laughs, filthy looks, and all the usual shiny shit you’ve come to expect from Pleasance’s own Christmas tree angel, Ginger Johnson.
From the same tiny mind that brought you How to Catch a Krampus and Escape from Planet Trash, Miss Rona may have put pay to her usual festive offering but that won’t stop Ginger from squeezing her lockdown paunch into 4 pairs of dance tights and making an idiot of herself in the name of entertainment. Expect songs, sequins and special guests.
Pecs Drag Kings present
Pecs: Queer Christmas
10th – 12th December 2020
The Kings of Pecs have been queerantined up in our castle but now it’s time to Pec the halls because we’re back in town and we want to spread the Christmas Queer.
Join us in our cosy cabaret grotto while we bring you some of our greatest festive hits, queermas tales and sexy socially distanced dances.
Put some Christmas Queer in your stocking filler!
The Cocoa Butter Club presents
Gifted
15th – 17th December 2020 Ooo-wee, what did you wish for?
The Cocoa Butter Club presents Gifted – an exquisite cabaret evening of excellence; delivering dreams, desires and demands to the most deserving – that’s you!
Wrapped in your favourite RnB, Neo Soul and Old Skool jams, expect a homecoming feeling, as our family reunites to ‘decolonise and re-moisturise’! Issa generous serving of multi-skilled and highly melanated talent, boasting burlesque, drag, music, spoken word, circus arts and more!
Bitten Peach presents
Bedtime Stories
21st – 22nd December 2020
2020 might be a total nightmare, but this December you’ll be having some sweet dreams as you dive into The Bitten Peach Bedtime Stories!
London’s Premiere Pan-Asian Cabaret Collective comes together to present a special winter season showcase, featuring some of your favourite fairytales with a queer twist and the Bitten Peach’s signature Asian flavours.
Pleasance, Carpenters Mews, North Road, London N7 9EF
The nearest underground station is Caledonian Road (Piccadilly Line). The nearest train stations are Kings Cross/St Pancras and Caledonian Road & Barnsbury Richmond.
Tickets from £15. Buy tickets from www.pleasance.co.uk or call 0207 609 1800.
Patrick has lost his hammer, and he’s also lost his clothes!
You see Patrick (Kevin Jannsens), in the new film simply called ‘Patrick,’ works at a nudist camp deep in the woods in a remote area in Belgium. It’s a nudist camp his father owns, and where, along with his mother, all share a home in the camp. His mother is blind and his father is getting a bit too old to run the camp. Then one day Patrick notices that one of his hammers is gone, so he spends the entire film in search of his hammer (yes, literally a hammer). Patrick goes from tent to tent in the hopes of finding his hammer – he so obsessed about it that when his father suddenly dies, Patrick still has only one thing on his mind – yes you guessed it – to find his hammer.
The nudist camp is full of characters, all naked all the time. After a bit, the nudity becomes a bit unnoticeable and the storyline gets quirkier and quirkier, including when a famous American musician takes up a spot in the camp who perhaps knows a thing to two about the hammer. Also about to be revealed is a secret his father had, and his mother’s knowledge about the secret. But Patrick is oblivious to the whole thing – he just wants his hammer back. From Peaky Blinders director Tim Mielants, Patrick is quirky, a bit funny, and definitely different.
Henry Blake, in his debut as director and writer, gives us an intimate and moving portrait of a young man groomed into the drug trade.
In County Lines, we meet Tyler (Conrad Khan), who lives at home with his single mother Toni (a very good Ashley Madekwe) and his little sister Briony (Shauna Sim). Tyler is a disaffected youth in east London, and at 14 is the man of the house. His mother has a hard time making ends meet, and also has a hard time getting Tyler to open up. Tyler is just going through the motions at school, couldn’t care either way about it, nor about the men his mom brings home. But one day he meets the good-looking and sharp-dressed Simon (Harris Dickinson).
Simon offers Tyler the opportunity to make money, money much needed in his cash strapped home to pay the bills. Soon enough, Tyler gets sucked into the world of drug-running – delivering drugs and collecting money – but it all comes at a risk, not just from the authorities but from other dealers in the business as well. But Tyler gets in way too deep, but will the new trainers and extra money be worth the risk?
Khan is just about perfect as the young man who wants to do right by his family and takes an opportunity he sees as too good to be true. Khan, a veteran of many films, including The Huntsman and The Passenger, has an amazingly expressive face. Madekwe also just about perfect as his struggling mom, while Dickinson (Beach Rats) is good as always. Director Blake pulls us into Tyler’s bleak world from the start – it’s an amazing debut from Blake – who originally created this film as a short – nominated for the Best British Short Film Award at the London Short Film Festival last year.
A newly married French gay couple journey to America to find a surrogate in the moving documentary ‘Ghosts of the Republique.’
It was love at first sight for Aurelien and Nicolas when they meet at a gay club in Paris. They wind up getting married and such begins the film and their journey. It’s 2014 and estate agent Nicolas and flight attendant Aurelien make a perfect couple, while both their parents have accepted the fact that their gay sons would never be parents. Even Nicolas’s mother is happy to now have two sons but upset that she’ll never be happy as she’ll never have a grandchild.
However, Aurelien and Nicolas do want to have a child, but they face serious obstacles – the most difficult one being that the French government does not allow surrogacy. It’s a government that passed same-sex marriage in 2013 but is not quite progressive enough. Aurelien and Nicolas are so determined to be parents that they fly to Las Vegas to start a family of their own through international surrogacy. They search high and low for an egg donor and also a surrogate to carry the egg to produce a child. They interview several local women, make decisions, and proceed with the process.
It’s a process that’s complex, full of loopholes and uncertainty, and where every step has to go perfect and according to plan. Getting their non-French born baby back into France and establishing French citizenship is another hurdle to tackle. We go through the highs and the lows with Aurelien and Nicolas in the documentary – it’s an emotional ride made bearable by the charming couple who desperately want a baby, and we see them travel back and forth from France to the US several times to check in their baby mama.
Ghosts of the Republique, directed by American Jonathon Narducci, provides us with much joy and drama in this sweet and touching story of Aurelien and Nicolas.
Ghosts of the Republique is now available on Amazon Prime, iTunes and other platforms.
It goes without saying that the bar, pub and club industry has been completely brutalised by lockdowns and Tier systems in place in the UK caused by the on-going coronavirus pandemic.
As Boris Johnson’s administration announced which areas in England would be placed into which tiers, many cities which have large LGBT+ scenes found themselves in Tier 3, leaving them unable to open unless operating as a takeaway or drive through. Many gay bars are simply not set up to handle or offer food.
Live venues and performer in Tier system overlooked by government
One drag performer tweeted Boris Johnson demanding to know why certain settings like theatres, casinos, theme parks and escape rooms were permitted to open yet live venues which, do not offer food, but offer live entertainment such as cabaret and drag shows were not permitted to open.
Carrot, a non-binary drag performer wrote,
“Live performers & venues in music, cabaret & drag need clarity from @10DowningStreet NOW. Why can theatres open and sell drinks in the intervals, when live venues who have spent huge amounts of £s and time making safe allocated seating cannot without selling food?”
“Why can casinos & theme parks & escape rooms open in tier 2, places that are essentially impossible to clean entirely & keep safe, yet pubs & bars with allocated seating and table service cannot?
“Live artists & venues have lost so much already & are still being overlooked.
“It’s really heartbreaking. and yet somehow completely unsurprising.”
Live performers & venues in music, cabaret & drag need clarity from @10DowningStreet NOW.
Why can theatres open and sell drinks in the intervals, when live venues who have spent huge amounts of £s and time making safe allocated seating cannot without selling food?
How does hospitality contribute to the rising numbers of Coronavirus cases?
Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association said, “Hospitality has accounted for as little as 2% of Covid cases”, and Kate Nicholls CEO, UK Hospitality said, “Pubs and restaurants pay the price of tougher tier restrictions – no other sector are facing restrictions like these.”
Government data has shown that house-to-house mixing has the highest rate of rates of transmission for the virus.
Bars and clubs have closed because of COVID-19 restrictions.
The CEO of one of the UK’s oldest and best-loved LGBT+ bars, the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, has hit out at Boris Johnson’s Christmas plan of allowing multiple houses to mix during the height of a pandemic, but not allowing them to mix in Covid-secure settings like pubs and bars is a “road to nowhere”
He said it was “inflicting devastating pain to an industry on the verge of collapse”.
James Lindsay, The RVT‘s CEO has written a blistering open letter to Boris Johnson and his cabinet saying that the current Christmas plan to allow up to three households to mix for five days during the festive season is a “mockery” of all the hardship that the hospitality industry has been through in the last 39 weeks.
He also told the Prime Minister that the plans to allow families to mix in their own homes, but not in restaurants or pubs, was putting “vulnerable people at risk” and denying the LGBT+ community a chance to mix and socialise with their chosen families.
He wrote, The Government’s olive branch for a ‘family Christmas’ is clearly aimed at appeasing the “party” faithful. As well as putting many vulnerable people at risk this also denies the LGBTQ+ community their much needed time with friends and our chosen families.
“Our venues offer a safe space for people who often don’t have the ‘normal’ family support”.
Gay Bars are at particular risk when the tier system returns.
One of the issues facing many bars, but in particular gay bars, is that many aren’t equipped to serve food – which is one of the requirements for pubs to be able to open in at least two Tiers of the Government’s system. Bars which solely sell drink are unable to open in Tier 2 and Tier 3. Only bars which sell “substantial” food can open in Tier 2 and can only operate as takeouts in Tier 3.
With most of the country expected to be entered into Tier 2 or 3 when Boris Johnson announces the Tier system today, the Equator bar in Birmingham announced that it might have to close forever, adding “Equator bar is not a restaurant so will not be allowed to open in Tier 2” and added, “Maybe time to call it a day”.
Speaking about the crisis facing the LGBT+ Scene, Lindsay continued, “The vast majority of LGBTQ+ venues don’t serve food but offer cabaret, DJs, screenings and a whole range of other events that people need to buy tickets in the same way theatres do.
“A venue such at The RVT not only supports its staff and customers but has a whole range of self-employed performers and promotors that rely on us and all the other venues, many of whom are from marginalised groups within our community.”
How does hospitality contribute to the rising numbers of Coronavirus cases?
Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association said, “Hospitality has accounted for as little as 2% of Covid cases”, and Kate Nicholls CEO, UK Hospitality said, “Pubs and restaurants pay the price of tougher tier restrictions – no other sector are facing restrictions like these.”
Government data has shown that house-to-house mixing has the highest rate of rates of transmission for the virus.
Government must compensate the hospital sector
Lindsay continued, “We understand the need for safety and Public Health, since March we have followed every rule the Government has told us to, but now the Government needs to do the honourable thing and financially support the approach to destroy a much loved industry and fully compensate commercially viable businesses who have been operating Covid-19 compliance.
“That means grants that fully cover their fixed costs and loss of business and loss of profit.
Road to nowhere
“It feels like we are on a road to nowhere that will result in the decimation of the hospitality sector as well as more deaths from Covid.
“Maybe I should ask – What is the purpose of this Government? They have not consulted with the hospitality industry and the advice that has been provided by the industry experts has been ignored. Equally the advice of the Governments own experts with the strategy they have deployed has also been ignored.”
