Today, July 18 2014, sees the UK release of I Am Divine, a documentary by Jeffrey Schwarz about the mother of all alt-drag icons. This is a piece I wrote about Divine for the Curzon cinemas magazine. No one likes to be constantly identified with past glories and by the end of his life, […]
I used to be wary of describing myself as a critic. It just sounds mean, or like you know better than everyone else. But I’ve thought about it and these days, it’s a term I embrace: critic and proud! The reason for this is pretty much the same straightforward reason a lot of us still […]
Gushing reportage of the nuptials between glamorous, trailblazing artist and performer David Hoyle and Christeene Vale, the elegant debutante who has taken Texan high society by storm
This Friday it’s the second edition of Come With Me If You Want To Live, the quarterly cabaret show I’m producing and presenting for Chelsea Theatre. The last one was a belter – we had to turn people away! – and this one should be every bit as good. By way of plugging it, I’ve […]
I wrote a piece for the Guardian last week setting out a few of the ideas about recent LGBT cinema that I’ve been thinking about since BFI Flare earlier in the year – namely the idea of a ‘backward turn’ in which three types of film are increasingly prevalent: features with period settings; documentaries about […]
I’ve been a fan of Nathan Evans for ages – he’s a bit of a renaissance man whose interests intersect with many of my own, notably queer cabaret and film work. As a producer and performer, he’s worked on projects ranging from the RVT’s pioneering Vauxhallville variety night to making shows with David Hoyle, Fancy […]
Today is Pride in London and I did a round-up of events in the capital for yesterday’s Evening Standard. I like how open the Standard is these days to LGBT and even occasionally queer content. For this round-up (which also includes a few entries written by the features desk and included under my byline), I […]
Doctor Brown is the kind of act that makes audiences nervous: a rampant bearded clown who speaks largely gibberish and literally gets in your face, clambering over seats to sit in people’s laps, kiss them, even slap them. What kind of person would volunteer to spend an entire day trapped in an enclosed space with […]
I love a bit of Christeene. I flagged up her bravura flying visit to London in my round-up of cabaret highlights of 2013, and now she’s back in a big way, hitting Soho Theatre and Duckie’s Gay Shame ahead of a full Edinburgh run. This Q&A for Run-Riot is probably my favourite email interview that […]
Over the past year or two, some of the institutions that helped shape the London cabaret scene since the turn of the century have bitten the dust: companies like the Boom Boom Club and Eat Your Heart Out; residencies like the DE Experience at the RVT and the Wam Bam Club at the Café de […]
