THEGAYUK

Category: Review

  • THEATRE REVIEW | King Charles III, Almeida Theatre

    ★★★★ | King Charles III, Almeida Theatre
    Queen Elizabeth II is no more. Long live the King! Prince Charles has long courted controversy, offering his opinions about political matters, the environment and been the victim of press intrusion. How will he take on the mantel of power after a lifetime waiting in the wings, especially when the first task is to sign off a bill limiting the powers of the press? How will the younger royals react to his reign? More importantly, what will become of the nation?

    Mike Bartlett’s future history play about the reign of King Charles is an unusual but effective piece of thought provoking comedy. Written in a Shakespearean style with dialogue in cod blank verse and abundant soliloquys. Shakespearean tropes abound too: the whispering ghost casting a shadowy figure across the stage (Princess Diana, complete with head tilt, of course), the scheming, ambitious wife (Catherine Duchess of Cambridge) and the foppish fool (Prince Harry).

    The recognisable characters of the modern soap opera family that is the Windsors are instantly recognisable yet the cast manage to give them depths and motivations that the viewer wouldn’t always expect. Tim Piggott-Smith portrays Charles as a principled man; misguided and idealistic at times but wise at others, with an underlying crisis of confidence bubbling beneath the surface. Lydia Wilson is spellbinding as Kate and Richard Goulding’s Harry, bewitched by a Republican commoner from South East London, is magnificent. Handsome Oliver Chris is a revelation as a William who is less effete than he initially appears.

    Rupert Gould has managed to stage the play as a haunting piece of modern theatre that is watchable and compelling yet also informative and highly relevant to our times. This is a hilarious play that is quite an exceptional piece of theatre following on from the Almeida’s recent run of stand out pieces.

    I suspect that this play will go on to huge success and acclaim and wouldn’t be surprised by a West End transfer. Now might be the time to catch it in the intimate space of the Almeida that lends itself so well to this production.

    King Charles III runs until Saturday 31st of May

    Buy tickets here: http://www.almeida.co.uk/event/kingcharles

  • FILM REVIEW | Yves Saint Laurent

    ★★★★ | Yves Saint Laurent

    Yves St Laurent was regarded as the most consistently celebrated and influential designer for twenty-five years. He is credited with both spurring Haute Couture’s rise from its 1960’s ashes and with finally rendering Ready-to-Wear reputable. He was unquestionably a genius and it’s no exaggeration at all to state that some of his ‘creations’ were stunning masterpieces.

    He was however, a very troubled and tormented soul. An aspect that this new biopic on M. St Laurent makes a point of labouring on. As a piece of fiction the story of how this timid gentle soul who, at the tender age of 21 took over from his mentor Christian Dior to head up the Couture House is totally compelling. The year is 1957 and his first Collection as Head Designer at Dior catapulted him to international stardom. A year later he met Pierre Bergé, an industrialist who became his lover, and later his business partner after Dior had sacked St Laurent. He and Bergé set up the House of Yves St Laurent together.

    The movie focuses on how St Laurent, who had always been a manic depressive, became heavily dependent on alcohol and drugs just to cope with his daily pressures. As he sought solace (and sex) in the arms of other young men, his exploits landed him in police stations and on newspaper front pages, and he was always being rescued by Bergé who saved the day yet again. The couple spilt up romantically in 1976, a fact that is not mentioned in the movie, but remained business partners until St Laurent’s death from brain cancer in 2008.

    It’s a real treat to see the scenes of St Laurent at work in his Salon watching him create unforgettable pieces that were greatly influenced by his love of non-European culture. Also some of the scenes of almost debauchery when he is out partying with close friends like Karl Lagerfeld and Loulou de la Falaise when he looks like he is actually enjoying himself for a change. However fact and fiction start to really cross wires, and whilst we are expected to believed that this was a man who refused to take responsibility for anything, it’s nigh on impossible to believe that Bergé was such a saintly figure who never ever even dreamed about sleeping around or sniffing a line of coke or anything remotely bad.

    The movie based on Laurence Benaim’s biography was made with with Bergé’s ‘approval’ who has always had a reputation as a control freak and in the same way he micro-managed YSL, he has obviously totally manipulated the way that both he and St Laurent are portrayed in this movie. It’s such a pity as I believe that the real truth of this remarkable and tempestuous relationship is a great story still waiting to be told.

    Maybe it will be in Bertrand Bonello’s new movie ‘Saint Laurent’ currently being made now without Berge’s approval.

    Fact or fiction, there were still two incredible performances from the lead actors Guillaume Gallienne as Bergé, and Pierre Niney who was completely pitch perfect as the vulnerable St. Laurent.

    There was one remarkable touching scene when St Laurent arrives home, the worse for wear after an all night bender and has collapsed in the bathroom. As Bergé helps him, St Laurent tearfully confesses that he loves his new boyfriend Jacques, but that Berge will always be the love of his life. And you really want to believe that this indeed really was the case.

    Available to buy / view on: Amazon | Amazon Prime | iTunes

  • FILM REVIEW | Any Day Now

    ★★★★★ | Any Day Now

    So, here’s the thing, I can be an old, hard cynical fart when I want to be – but occasionally, just occasionally along comes something that makes me weep like a baby.

    This film is one of those things.

    What starts out as a simple story of love and acceptance quickly turns into one of bigotry and spite – leading to an unexpected ending. Based on a true story, this is one emotional roller-coaster.

    The storyline is simple, boy meets boy, boy blows boy in front seat of car, Rudy (Alan Cumming) is a low rent drag queen/singer, Paul (Garret Dillahunt) is a closeted lawyer – and these are our two main characters. Set in Los Angeles in 1978, Rudy lives in a flea pit apartment block, and when his drug addicted neighbour is arrested and sent to jail, the twosome take in her teenage son Marco (Isaac Leyva) and become the family unit they all want and need.

    However, this is the late ’70s, and their family soon draw the wrong kind of attention, and then the prejudice kicks in. A biased legal system, people perceptions of gay life and children – a far cry from the current ads being run by several councils offering fostering with images of smiling gay or lesbian couples as images of happy families.

    It highlights a time when it was “in the child’s best interest” to be placed with a convicted drug addict, rather than a loving same sex couple. When a downs syndrome child may be better off incarcerated in an institution rather then even consider that a gay couple could give him the love and caring he needs.

    There are some lovely set pieces in the film, the loving couple Rudy and Paul portray, the stories Marco needs to sleep (always with a happy ending), his love of donuts and Isaac’s acting ability – the heart wrenching scene when he cries himself to sleep as he can’t go home.

    A strong cast and crew make this one of the best films of its kind in a long time with Travis Fine doing a great job as director, writer and producer.

    My advice, buy a big bag of Minstrels and an entire box of Kleenex before hitting play – enjoy the film, and the cry!

    BUY ON AMAZON | BUY ON ITUNES

     

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Three Sisters, Southwark Playhouse

    ★★★★★ | | Three Sisters, Southwark Playhouse

    Three sisters are living in a vast house three thousand miles from home, longing for different forms of escape as they languish in the Middle East.

    Overworked and highly strung English teacher, Olga, yearns for the romance she hasn’t been able to find, as she’s acted as the maternal figure for her younger siblings following the death of their parents. Wild and sullen Masha regrets a hasty marriage to a man she looks down on as a fool and idealistic Irina dreams of returning to England and escaping the boredom of life in an ex-pat community. Meanwhile their brother, Andrey, is failing to live up to his early promise as he contemplates an unsuitable marriage to someone brash and vulgar and is threatening to bring them to ruin with his dissipation.

    Tended to by two elderly servants, they rattle around their huge property. Hard drinking, hidden desires and deceit abound as the siblings spar with each other, fend off the outside world and unwittingly welcome in turmoil and chaos in the shape of a trio of soldiers, far from their homes also, and an old family friend with issues with drink and brutal frankness.

    Anya Reiss’ skilful reworking of Chekov’s classic 1901 play brings it bang up to date into the 21st century and proves what a witty and skilled observer of human nature the author was. Language and situation may have changed radically in over a hundred years but motivations and desires haven’t. The complex plot is retold beautifully and with panache.

    This play certainly packs a punch with breath-taking performances, a versatile and well-utilised set and a well paced dramatic arc. Southwark Playhouse has managed to pull off an astounding piece of theatre. The cast are particularly strong with knock out performances all round.

    If you’re a Chekov fan then this won’t disappoint. If you’re new to Chekov’s work then you couldn’t get a much finer introduction than Reiss’ reworking. This has to be one of the must see plays of the spring.

    Three Sisters is on at Southwark Playhouse until the 3rd of May 2014

    Book tickets here: http://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/index.php/the-large/three-sisters/

  • FILM REVIEW | Cupcakes

    ★★★★ | Cupcakes

    The Eurovision Song Contest, which is the epitome of the true meaning of ‘eurotrash’, really owes its continuing success to the thousands of gay men throughout the world who slavishly watch the Broadcast every year with such glee.

    There are few programs on television these days that are camper than this outdated competition that seeks to find a winner from amongst some of the most innocuous pop songs ever written.

    When director Eytan Fox was visiting the Berlinale Film Festival a few years ago and was channel surfing in his hotel room he came across the show and something must of clicked. Hence the man who gave us intensely serious gay dramas such as The Bubble and Yossi & Jaegar decided that this should be the basis of his new fluffy confection of a movie about agroup of disparate friends trying to win what he dubbed as UniverSong.

    Six motley neighbors in an apartment building in Tel Aviv each with their own hangups or quirks who don’t actually want to go public, do just that when the song they write together almost by accident, goes viral on YouTube and they somehow get chosen to be the official entry for Israel.

    The oldest one is middle-aged Anat whose husband has just walked out on her and their bakery business; there is serious Dana who works an aide to a government minister just to please her orthodox father and who is paranoid at doing anything remotely frivolous. Yael was once a beauty queen and is now a lawyer and is also desperate to be taken seriously; there is painfully shy Karen who prefers to just share her life with her cybermates rather than step outside of her front door; and punky lesbian Efrat the alternative singer/songwriter who thinks such a frivolous undertaking as this competition is completely beneath her. It’s only kindergarten teacher Ofrat with a penchant for sequin drag who is really excited about accepting the invitation to compete, despite the pleas of his neurotic closeted boyfriend who’s family business actually sponsors the show.

    As in a typical show business fashion the professionals who decide that as they know best, they take over and create a monstrously big production routine for the group to perform. It is a total disaster as it takes out every single nuance of homespun charm, and at the same time, completely exasperates the patience of these bewildered amateurs.

    This is a fairy tale after all… literally… and they seize back the song and the competition in order for them all to win the prize, which is not actually the trophy, but mainly about them getting the lives they all really want. Even the Baker comes back. It is after all, that kind of story.

    I’m still shocked that this is the work of sober filmmaker Fox, but in this lightweight, pretty colored, camp romp he shows he can be as whimsical and entertaining as the next man. Maybe Pedro Almodovar even.

    Available to buy / view on: Amazon | Amazon Prime | iTunes

  • Confidante Sexual Heath Kit Reviewed

    If you’re concerned about your sexual health and always find excuses not to get checked out, then the new Confidante STI home test may be for you. I try out a kit to find out just how easy it is to use.

    The kit tests for ten different STI (Sexually Transmitted Infections) from either a urine sample or a swab. Using the urine pot I collected my sample, filled a vile and that was it. Simple. No needles, no umbrella metal objects to push down anything! You then just fill out the form and return with your sample in the pre-paid envelope provided.

    It says test results can take up to a week and as soon as I’d posted the kit, though fairly confident on my results having been in a long term relationship, I still felt that sudden ‘Oh dear, what if something comes back positive?’

    The results can be sent a number of ways via post, email, phone or online. I opted for online and as soon as I received the email to say they were in, I logged onto the website with my unique reference number to discover I was in fact clear in all ten tests. It’s always reassuring to know you’re not carrying an STI that you didn’t know about, especially as some can go undetected for years.

    Of course had any of the tests come back positive then you will be advised to seek appropriate treatment either from a Genito Urinary Medicine (GUM) clinic or your GP. Should you not want to discuss results with your GP then other advice can be offered on services available to you.
    The Confidante lab uses your sample to test for the following:

    1 – Chlamydia trachomatis
    2 – Neisseria gonorrhoea
    3 – Treponema pallidum (Syphilis)
    4 – Herpes Simplex Virus 1
    5 – Herpes Simplex Virus 2
    6 – Trichomonas vaginalis
    7 – Mycoplasma hominis
    8 – Mycoplasma genitalium
    9 – Ureaplasma genitalium
    10 – Haemophilus ducreyi (Chancroid)

    You can order your kits online at www.confidantetest.com

  • FILM REVIEW | Age Of Consent

    ★★★★ | Age Of Consent

    Age of Consent, tells the story of The Hoist, one of London’s few remaining leather bars, which opened in 1996.

    It being the story of a sex club, we get to see plenty of sex, some of it quite graphic. Ultimately, though, it turns out to be not only a fascinating glimpse into London’s leather scene, but a history of gay sex since decriminalisation.

    Did you know, for instance, that there were more convictions for gross indecency in 1989 than there were in 1966, the year before homosexuality was made legal for “consenting men in private”?

    The “in private” part was something the police vigorously enforced it would seem, often using pretty policeman to entrap gay men and secure a conviction. Against a backdrop of leather men grunting and groaning with pleasure, Peter Tatchell talks eloquently, as ever, about the continuing battle for equality under the law; co-owners Kurt Striegler and Guy Irwin tell us all about how the club got started., and some of its regulars tell us what makes the club special for them.

    There are no doubt those amongst the gay community (like James Wharton who was only recently proposing the closure of all gay saunas) who will find the goings on in the club quite disgusting, but surely the point is that we should all have equality before the law, whatever our sexual preferences, a fact that was brought brilliantly home by this excellent documentary.

    I do hope it gets an official release.

     

  • FILM REVIEW | Rosie

    ★★★★  | Rosie

    Age and aging were some of the concerns of Rosie, a Swiss film, directed by Marcel Gisler, in which gay writer Lorenz and his sister Sophie squabble and ultimately reconcile about what to do with their aging alcoholic mother, Rosie, splendidly played by Sybille Brunner.

    Plenty of family skeletons fall out of the cupboard as Lorenz tries to get to the bottom of the rift that existed between his mother and father, a rift that coloured his and his sister’s childhood.

    A touching and eventually uplifting movie about family with a sly, gentle humour.

     

  • FILM REVIEW | Gerontophilia

    ★★★ | Gerontophilia

    Toronto based filmmaker Bruce LaBruce is no stranger to controversy, and so it is that, in his latest movie, Gerontophilia, he turns to the subject of age gap relationships, which, according to LaBruce transgress a very strong cultural taboo.

    Lake is an unusual young man with an unusual fetish. Though he has a girlfriend, he is attracted to old men, a fetish he gets the chance to pursue when he starts a job as an orderly in an old people’s home. Whilst in the home, he is appalled at the way the inmates are treated and strikes up a relationship with Mr Peabody, weaning him off the medication that keeps him easy to manage, and eventually helping him to escape so they can set-off on a road-trip together. So far, so good, but for me the problem at the heart of the movie was that the central relationship between Lake and Mr Peabody didn’t really ring true. Maybe Pierre-Gabriel Lajoie had been encouraged to play Lake with a sort of wide-eyed innocence throughout, but it made it hard to believe that there was a strong sexual bond between the two men.

    However, with the veteran Walter Borden putting in a wittily amusing performance as Mr Peabody, it is a very enjoyable film, as much about how modern society responds to old age as it is about age-gap relationships.

    Available to buy / view on: Amazon | iTunes

  • FILM REVIEW | Lilting

    ★★★★★ | Lilting

    Lilting is a gently moving piece about bereavement, grief and colliding cultures, beautifully scripted and played and directed with a sure hand by Hong Khaou.

    The way in which he dovetails past and present, real and imaginary, whilst making sure the movie flows seamlessly was really quite special. He was immeasurably helped by some superb performances, especially Ben Whishaw’s deeply broken Richard, reeling from the recent loss of his boyfriend Kai, a performance superbly seconded by Cheng Pei Pei, as Kai’s mother Junn, a Chinese-Cambodian woman who has never come to terms with the English world she was thrust into.

    She has never learned to speak English and Kai was her only connection with the alien world she finds herself in. Despite their closeness Kai had never felt it possible to come out to her, leaving Richard with the impossible task of wanting to do right by his lover’s mother without divulging the true nature of their relationship.

    Wonderful supporting performances too from Andrew Leung as Kai. Peter Bowles as the Englishman Junn befriends in the home she is living in, and Naomi Christie as Vann, the translator Richard employs for Junn.

    Subtle, poetic, almost unbearably moving without being mawkish, this is a must see.

    Available to buy / view on: Amazon | Amazon Prime | iTunes

  • FILM REVIEW | The StandBys

    There cannot possibly be any other job in show (or any other) business where you need the patience of a Saint, be as tough old nails, and as resilient as a rubber band whilst possessing enough talent to substitute for a Broadway Star at the drop of a hat. This is of course the role of a Standby who spends their whole careers in the wings looking at the spotlights that may never ever shine on them.

    Stephanie Riggs’s moving and fascinating documentary follows the heartbreaking stories of three such performers who have made careers out of just waiting to go on. There is Merwin Foard, a good humored seasoned actor, with his amazing deep baritone voice, who gets his chance one afternoon to play Nathan Lane’s role in The Addams Family. He goes on stage to the customary groans from the audience when they realise they are not going to see the ‘star’, to wowing them all with his performance and earning a standing ovation by the end. Foard has been at this profession for 25 years now and has been in 14 Broadway productions, nearly always as the standby, but it has at least allowed him and his family to have a comfortable life. He considers himself one of the lucky ones.

    Young Ben Crawford was the standby for Brian d’Arcy James who had the title role in ‘Shrek the Musical.’ His Agent had procured him a Contract that gave him the right to take over when the Star eventually left, and that’s exactly what happened. Crawford got to wow audiences with his own take on the role and received some really good notices for his performance. He felt secure in the knowledge that he had finally ‘arrived’. Then as the show was set to close on Broadway, the producers of the national tour asked Crawford to audition for the role he had already played so well for months. They also asked his standby too, and in a cruel twist of fate, gave the role to the new man instead.

    The third actor was Aléna Watters whose roller coaster career was the hardest to witness. She got her big break appearing as one of the Harlettes who were the backing group for Bette Midler. After a short stint in Bette’s Show in Las Vegas, the producers called Aléna and without warning told her she would be replaced by one of the original Harlettes was returning. She was told that she could remain as ‘the Swing’ who would understudy for all the girls, which cushioned the bitter blow slightly. But then a month later and a second phone call, and she was laid off from that ‘due to budget restrictions’. She was devastated, as are we watching this all unfurl.

    All three performers were generous enough to allow Riggs and her cameras to follow them around for a couple of years and show all of their daily tribulations. She in turn does at least allow them a moment to showcase their talents with a song or two. As Bebe Neuwirth, herself once a standby said, that if it wasn’t for Broadway’s obsession with filling the stages with big celebrities these were the real performers who should be starring in these roles’.

    And it’s left to another ex standby David Hyde Pierce to sum it up so succinctly about when they actually get to go on… ‘for the audience it’s just yet another afternoon, but for that performer it could the highpoint of their entire life.’

    A must view for anyone who ever dreamt that they could or should have won a Tony or Olivier

    Available to buy / view on: Amazon