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Sink the Pink and Jonny Bongo to launch UK Pride 2020 in Newcastle

Two of the UK’s top club nights, Sink the Pink and Jonny Bongo, will team up next summer to kick off UK Pride 2020 in the North East, set to take place from July 17-19 and hosted by LGBTQ+ charity Northern Pride.

Organisers have huge plans for the weekend event, which will take place at Newcastle’s Town Moor and is sponsored by Barclays, with a Bongo’s Bingo Fundraiser on Friday, July 17 featuring host Jonny Bongo and queer party favourites, Sink the Pink.

Bongo’s Bingo co-founder Jonny Bongo returns to Newcastle after the success of last year’s Pride event, where players won prizes including a Philip Schofield cut out, a mobility scooter and a holiday to Los Angeles. 
He will be joined on stage by Sink the Pink, which has taken London by storm since it was founded in 2008 and is known for its anything-goes dress code, flamboyant entertainers and inclusive atmosphere.

The LGBTQ+ club night now tours the country, taking up residence in a variety of unconventional venues including working men’s clubs and theatres, and has performed at Glastonbury, Bestival, Lovebox and Latitude, alongside top music acts.


Ste Dunn, Chair of Northern Pride, said: 
“We’re delighted to be hosting UK Pride next year and we know we have big shoes to fill, which is why it’s great to have a huge personality like Jonny Bongo returning to host Bongo’s Bingo for a second year.


“Sink the Pink celebrates everything our festival is about, paying homage to our shared history and creating a space where people from all backgrounds can embrace what makes them unique.


“Our plans for UK Pride are to make the event bigger and more diverse than ever before and I can’t think of any better way to get people in the spirit for everything else to come over the weekend.”


Northern Pride has already teased plans for an ambitious six month programme of events in the lead up to the summer festival, including panel discussions, history projects and pop up exhibitions.

Tickets, starting at £18, for Bongo’s Bingo with Sink the Pink are now on sale at www.northern-pride.co.uk/box-office

For more information about Northern Pride: www.northern-pride.co.uk

LGBTIQ+ History Club this sunday

Brighton Museum and Art Gallery monthly LGBTIQ+ History Club. This coming Sunday – October 27th – from 2:30

History Club are back with a double bill of  local historian Jane Traies, and local author Corinna Edwards-Colledge.

Bloomsbury’s Hidden Neighbours: a lesbian love triangle in rural Sussex

Jane Traies has been investigating a transatlantic tangle of same-sex relationships among some of the most distinguished women of the day. Caroline Spurgeon was one of the first women in the UK to become a university professor and was widely known as the author of important books about Chaucer and Shakespeare. Like many of this first generation of graduate career women, she chose female companionship rather than marriage, and lived for many years in a small Sussex village with her ‘faithful friend of forty years.’
However, on closer inspection, their story is not the simple lesbian romance it appears. The Bloomsbury Group were not, it seems, the only people ‘loving in triangles’ in that part of Sussex in the 1920s and 30s.

The extraordinary story of Roy Edwards
Local author, Corinna Edwards-Colledge, tells the extraordinary story of her uncle, Roy Edwards, and how he went from being a working class lad from Essex to a key member of the British Surrealist movement from the 1950’s into the 1980’s. Includes a chance to hear his poetry and see some of his recently discovered art works in all their homoerotic and lyrical glory!

Sunday October 27th – 2:30-4:30pm
Brighton Museum & Art Gallery

History club is open to all (18+) and is free, but please book a TICKET as capacity is limited and the club is always very busy.

If you have any questions, suggestions or comments then email info@queerinbrighton.co.uk

Brighton LGBTQ+ History Club is supported by Brighton Museums, Arts Council England, And by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

more info about the group 

REVIEW: Murder, Margaret and Me @ Devonshire Park: Eastbourne

Murder, Margaret and Me 

Devonshire Park

Agatha Christie and Margaret Rutherford should never have been friends. But they were. Their paths crossed when they found themselves at the heart of one of British cinema’s most successful franchises. However, the Miss Marple films almost didn’t get made.

Murder, Margaret and Me is a story of friendship, identity and the achievement of women in the long-lost world of the silver screen.

It’s certainly a lovely piece of acting, three excellent actors interacting in some rather delightful character set pieces but the intersections of their lives seems forced, and oddly unfulfilling. Both of them have secrets, none of them terrible interesting to a modern audience and the really interesting parts of their lives used as throw away lines, not explored or chewed over, a missed opportunity to explore deeper . The high point of drama is the pilfering of some gooseberry jam from tea at Claridge’s  and the thrill that went though the Eastbourne audience was palpable. Perhaps I’m a bit jaded,  or perhaps I’m just so over gooseberry’s.

Two older women, both hugely successful and with a level of agency unusual in women of that time circle each others carefully constructed public images, creeping closer and trying to learn what it is that’s real and authentic about the other. There are tender disclosures and gentle revels but the seriously barbaric truths in their lives, which possible drive and scare them are left to lurk in the shadows, but perhaps this is the point of this play. Not some clever pathological and forensic analysis of these women and what they thought of each other, but a more genteel, very English, entitled, posh colonial,  cardigans, tea and stiff upper lip bumping of actor and writer over something which gave them both value; Marple & fame. We discover their shared vulnerability and gather an understanding of the ways they have fought to protect themselves from the expectations of public and life in general.

Lin Blakley’s Agatha is perfectly in control, Sarah Parks’s ‘Peggy’ Rutherford all jutting jaw and turning head is wonderful, quiveringly real,  and never tips over into caricature, a lost type of English women, and Gilly Tompkins Spinster  performances is touch perfect. All three excel at bringing these formidable characters to life, but as real people, as women of their time and in context but allowing us to absorb their personal attitudes and gain some understanding, although not much, about them as people. The spinster narrative character which both links and unpicks their lives is a lovely touch, speaking directly to us with a glint and twinkle in her eye.

The performances-  which are a serenely good piece of theatre – are left as islands of meaning in a still narrative sea where we bob in moments of Sargasso stillness,  sighing and looking around, pulling our cardigans around us and listening to the clock ticking away the second until we can, decently have, another schooner of sherry.

My companion, under 40 and only knowing Marple from the television adaptations didn’t have a clue what was going on, who was being referenced, name-dropped or alluded to and although impressed by the gentle and convincing acting, loving the shoes and appreciating the set, left somewhat confused about the narrative aim of the plot. Not something you’d want to do from a play about the queen of denouement.

If you’re a fan of Christie, or Rutherford or appreciate a well done and gentle period setting for a play then get along for a superb evenings entertainment, if you’re excepting some gripping and interesting narrative then you’ll be disappointed although it’s very pleasant to watch in an un-challenging way.  It did leave me wanting to learn more about Rutherford’s curious personal life and relationships and her adoption in 1968 and full support of her trans daughter and (later) biographer- Dawn Langley Simmons, now there’s a real story waiting to be told.

Appreciative note for the programme, very stylish and informative

Until 26th October

for more info or to book tickets see the theatre website: 

REVIEW: The Entertainer @ Theatre Royal

Archie Rice – middle-aged, washed-up song and dance man has seen better audiences and better times.

Originally set in the Suez Crisis of the 1950’s , this John Osborne classic documented the end of Empire, the demise of the touring variety show in favour of tv and political downfall of the powerful. This version , starring Shane Richie, and directed by Sean O’Connor, has been moved forwards  to Thatcher’s Britain of the 80’s and the time of the Falklands conflict.

Again it’s a time of turmoil – unemployment, strikes and street riots, and what many considered a pointless war , so the transposition seems a sensible one.

More crucial to the success of this play with songs is the central actor playing Archie. TV soap star Shane Richie is electrifying as the man who tells us he is “ dead behind the eyes “ yet strangely the comedian/actor/singer imbues Rice with tremendous if at times vicious energy.

Heading a dysfunctional family – with drunken second wife, feisty old prejudiced father (a role wonderfully  crafted by Pip Donaghy ) and feisty principled daughter , he reins more with shouting humour than anything else. He  brings his stage act home, using his relatives with the same ironic disdain as he treats us as his theatre audience.

Diane Vickers is energised as the visiting daughter who seems to have woken up to political activism but isn’t quite sure why. Sara Crowe is the recipient of our pity as the much cuckolded wife who seems to have no purpose in life that doesn’t involve a gin bottle.

Following in the footsteps of three theatrical knights – Olivier, Gambon and Branagh – is no mean feat  – but Richie’s early career as a holiday camp entertainer and later game show host sets him in good stead for the constant inane patter that is Archie’s hallmark, and he works an audience like an old pro.

Funnily enough Osborne is too good at the jokes and Richie effortlessly makes us laugh , even when he is struggling with his inner emptiness.

It’s a great performance.  If you miss him this week, Richie is back in April reprising his West End role as a drag queen in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.

The Entertainer is at the Theatre Royal Brighton until 26 October.

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