Claye Bowler’s Top at Queer Britain transforms the artist’s seven-year wait for gender-affirming surgery into an unflinching archival installation. Content warning: lots of representations of breasts, mentions of surgery, medical care. The exhibition itself contains human tissue, bodily fluids, and images of surgery. Top Top by Claye Bowler is on now at Queer Britain. It’s […]
Tate Modern’s Leigh Bowery! offers a vivid, if restrained, look at one of performance art’s most unruly icons. Leigh Bowery! Before you say anything, I know I’m at the point in the exhibition cycle again where I’m not leaving you much time to see things. My apologies. In my defense it’s a constantly busy museum […]
Places I Never Think About is a tender, funny, and richly crafted piece of queer storytelling, using music, folklore, and puppetry to bring Eastern European myths to life. Places I Never Think About There’s something deeply human about storytelling at its most essential. A circle of listeners, voices across generations weaving and embellishing old stories. […]
A promising concept, Who is Claude Cahun? does a lot more explaining than it does exploration of a complex, compelling identity. Who is Claude Cahun? Well, to start off with, I’ve seen the play now and I’m still not sure I know the answer to this question. Or at least not more than I did […]
In Hamstrung, George Rennie gives voice to Hamlet’s most famous skull, transforming Yorick into a lively, tragicomic narrator of his own tale. In Purgatory with a Player: The Clever Conceit of Hamstrung In Hamstrung, George Rennie reclaims Yorick (the long-dead fool of Hamlet fame) as something more than a grim punchline or discarded skull. With […]
A small but interesting exhibition featuring some new donations to the Queer Britain collection, Jimmy Somerville and Bronski Beat is well worth a look if you’re in the King’s Cross cultural quarter. Jimmy Somerville and Bronski Beat It’s not all that long since I last visited Queer Britain — you can read about that visit […]
The meeting of two women in a London train station has all the energy and mystery of quantum physics in this queer reworking of Simon Stephens’ Heisenberg. Heisenberg Formulated by the German physicist and Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg in 1927, the uncertainty principle states that we cannot know both the position and speed of a […]
A small but important new museum, Queer Britain tells the story of Britain’s Queer community through objects, archival materials and personal stories. Queer Britain One of the wonderful things about writing an arts and culture blog in London is the never-ending supply of things to write about. Not only new theatre programming and exhibitions, but […]
A Pleasance Theatre double bill of Oh My Pain, My Beautiful Pain! and Acid’s Reign, two very different productions as part of Relish Theatre’s Regeneration Season which nonetheless add up to an exhilarating evening of hard-hitting themes wrapped in inventive drag and cabaret packages. A Double Bill at the Pleasance Theatre, London It’s been a […]
I get familiar with a new genre of music and plenty of Spanish history at the surprisingly intimate yet educational Copla: A Spanish Cabaret. Copla: A Spanish Cabaret If you’re looking for a show that’s a little different, look no further than Copla: A Spanish Cabaret at The Other Palace. It offers an experience that’s part performance, […]
