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Author: Eric Page

Meet the Author: Redfern Jon Barrett @ the Ledward Centre tonight

Posted on by Eric Page

This month’s ‘Meet the Author’ event, a free evening of sparkling wit and laid back conversation with Scene book reviewer Eric Page, is at the Ledward Centre this evening at 7pm. ( doors 6:30)

Meet the Author events see Eric pop an author on the sofa and chat about writing, books, queerness and inspiration. This month is the turn of deliciously decadent Redfern Jon Barrett whose book Proud Pink Sky breaks down the binary between utopia and dystopia – presenting a vision of the world’s first gay state.

A glittering metropolis of 24 million people, Berlin is a bustling world of Pride parades, polyamorous trysts, and even an official gay language. Challenging assumptions of sex and gender, Proud Pink Sky questions how much we must sacrifice to find identity and community.

You can read the Scene review of Proud Pink Sky here

Redfern’s essays and short stories have appeared in publications including The Sun, Guernica, Strange Horizons, Passages North, PinkNews, Booth, FFO, ParSec, Orca, and Nature Futures. Born in Sheffield in 1984, Redfern grew up in market towns, seaside resorts, and post-industrial cities before moving to Wales to study at Swansea University (Prifysgol Abertawe). Redfern is non-binary queer and they have campaigned for LGBTQ+ and polyamory rights since they were a teenager. They currently live in Berlin.

Join Eric in the comfortable surroundings of the Ledward Centre for an entertaining evening of gentle probing and hear the author read from their book. There will be opportunities for questions, and you can even get your copy signed!

This event is free but ticked. Book your FREE ticket via this link

 

BOOK REVIEW: ‘Proud Pink Sky’ by Redfern Jon Barrett

Posted on by Eric Page

Review: Eric Page

Proud Pink Sky breaks down the binary between utopia and dystopia – presenting a vision of the world’s first gay state. A glittering metropolis of 24 million people, this MegaCity of Berlin is a bustling world of Pride parades, polyamorous trysts, with an official gay language, Polari. Its distant radio broadcasts are a lifeline for teenagers William and Gareth, but is there a place for them in the deeply divided city? Meanwhile, young mother Cissie loves Berlin’s towering high rises and chaotic multiculturalism, yet she’s never left her heterosexual district – not until she discovers a walled-off slum of perpetual twilight, home to the city’s forbidden trans residents.

Meet the Author event: Redfern Jon Barrett @ the Ledward Centre this Thursday, July 20, free event, learn more and get tickets here: 

Challenging assumptions of sex and gender, Proud Pink Sky questions how much we must sacrifice to find identity and community.

The story follows the journey to Berlin of these two couples, one hetro one gay/queer and their various reasons for making the move, through choice, or urgent necessity. We don’t learn too much about the contemporary history/political situations of their world, although we spend some time in a deeply puritanical England and the gay enclave of Brighton – politically affiliated to and sheltered by the power of the Republic of Berlin. As the story progresses, it backfills important events and dates to give a more rounded idea of the context of the Republic of Berlin, it’s believable and captures the idea that history is a flow, and will find a way to produce the same effects no matter the course it follows.

We learn about day to day living in the Republic from the experiences of the main two protagonists, and their partners, friends and acquaintances.  Through chance meetings a close net of relationships develop based on usual human needs; friendship, company, finding a family and a safe place, along with the need for adventure! As the characters settle into their new home, this apparently glittering queer paradise – we quickly learn – is not quite as perfect as it seems, although it’s viewed (and promoted) as a haven for LGBTQ+ people across the world.

“It asks us what it is to be a real ally, it asks us to look beyond our comfortable privilege…”

By using both a young male gay couple and a heterosexual family the author allows us to understand the experience of a wide range of different identities as both couples learn more about the real diversity and vibrant complexity of the world they are living in. As they explore, literally and emotionally the spaces they now inhabit, being exposed to new ideas, and ways of being they begin to understand the truth of their own lives and how that will affect them living in the gay republic.

The political settlement of the Republic is unanimously gay and lesbian, not LGBTQ. Gender diversity is considered a threat to the integrity of the Republic, with trans and binary people driven to live in a permanently overshadowed walled ghetto, bisexuality is barley tolerated and trans and heterophobia opening practiced. There’s an ugliness under the buff exfoliated skin of the glittering towers of this Rainbow Metropolis.

Barrett’s prose is engaging, and they fold a good action based narrative thumping in and around the personal relationships of these people. The move to the huge megalopolis changes who they are, what they are and the way they relate to each other.  We see how the political unrest, the prejudice and privilege of the ruling lesbian and gay classes plays out on the trans, hetero, and gender queer minorities who work the bars, construction and menial jobs that keep the city running.

Redfern Jon Barrett

There’s some funny set scenes woven in which made me smile, the geography of the city a camp nod to current LGBTQ+ tribal designations,  the idea of a noble ( but not perfect) Gay Republic is glorious and Barrett sets this up well, giving heroic history to the development of this megacity space. The exploration and horrible denouement of the book, but not of the Republic, gives us both insight into the ways that fear and radicalization eats away at good people, and also offers hope in the transformation of ignorance into understanding.

This sub plot also ramps up the narrative tension, in a harsh staccato way. Without too many spoilers, our main protagonists undergo an emotional transformation allowing them to reach the beginning of authentic living. Barrett offers us no happy endings, but there is a resolve; untidy, uncomfortable, and ugly in parts, it is also intensely human in its choices. The book brings this point back to the centre of the narrative time and time again and echoes and explores our own worlds contemporary problems with extending real inclusion to our gender diverse communities in an equitable and fair way.

“Proud Pink Sky reminds us that hope will never be silent.”

Proud Pink Sky is an entertaining and engaging queer alt’ history novel based in a believable futuristic gay and lesbian republic; a glittery brave new world; a MegacitySlay suggestive of a queer cross between Blade Runner and Logans Run; a fabulous multi-layered, dense city of the future run by a conservative, binary power structure, oozing privilege, fighting change. Its own traumatic early history, playing out again in the trauma visited on ‘others’.  The established ruling elite is brittle with vested interest and pumps out populist propaganda to keep its population angry, and focused on the sedition of a marginalised minority, teetering on Orwellian tyranny to keep the status quo. Now what does that remind me of?

Barrett’s deeply human story of lives, loves, tragedy and hope touches us all in its universality, but it is a clarion call for unconditional acceptable and a warning against how thin a gruel tolerance is for nourishing people with no rights. It asks us what it is to be a real ally, it asks us to look beyond our comfortable privilege, it urges us to hold out our hands to our LGBTQ+ siblings and feel the commonality, and fight for equality for all. Proud Pink Sky reminds us that hope will never be silent.

Polari is one of the official languages of this gloriously imagined Berlin, and one of the curious aspects of the book is, as the story develops, the characters learn and use more and more Polari in their everyday speech, allowing the reader to absorb and learn this historical queer lingo alongside. The book left me with a pretty good understanding of Polari which was an unexpected treat and has a comprehensive appendix of this historical LGBTQ+ lingo at the end. Bona!

Out now, paperback. For more info or to order the book see the publisher’s website here:

BOOK REVIEW: QUEER LIFE, QUEER LOVE. VOLUME 2 Matt Bates

Posted on by Eric Page

QUEER LIFE, QUEER LOVE.

VOLUME 2

Matt Bates

Review by Eric Page

This second installment of selected writing chosen by editors from Muswell Press is a uber Queer celebration of the best writing from the global margins. 44 poems, essays, stories and short fiction,  bundled up into this anthology offering unique perspectives of our world through the Queer lens. As in the volume 1, there is a focus on both established writers and an effort to bring new writers front and centre by showcasing their work and differing narrative forms.

These stories hold the beat of Queerness strong; it pounds through the plots, prose and ideas shared between these pages, holding up to the light, pressing close in the shadows, highlighting in ultra neon, throwing the most fabulous shade, the intersectional voices of the authors are seriously diverse. The fascinating, the forbidden, the subversive, and even the mundane, but all works that express the view from outside, but folding that back inside to share our views, our space, our authentic lives.

From the deeply serious to the rather funny, from epic leaps of the imagination to the gritty clarity of autobiographical extracts, all Queer life is here offered up to the discerning reader with a blunt, brutal, and beguiling authenticity which engages from the first page. Pick it up and drop open randomly and dive into the thrilling stories, or methodically work your way from front to back, or back to front, of course, if you’re non-rectoverso reader.

I enjoy the opportunity to explore new writers and a broad anthology is an easy way to do this, the team at Muswell Press have excelled at bringing together a real range of voices here, diverse, inclusive, engaging and challenging. It also included a few writers who frankly didn’t engage with me at all, but that’s the glory of a wide collection, you can just skip the ones you don’t like.  I don’t want my books to lead me into familiar pastures, I want them to take me off into the unknown, the different, the wild, the possible. Queer Life, Queer Love does just that, with passion, verve, and a thrilling disregard for convention.

Out now £9.99

For more info or to buy the book see the publisher’s website here:

 

BOOK REVIEW: Broken Hearts & Zombie Parts by William Hussey

Posted on by Eric Page

Broken Hearts & Zombie Parts

William Hussey

Review by Eric Page 

How do you cure a broken heart? In this Gay Rom-Zom-Com we follow our protagonist  Jesse Spark, a huge movie geek,  who sports a literal broken heart and in weeks will require major surgery to repair it. In this time he’s set himself the task of finding a boyfriend  and grabbing a summer romance, one he thinks may be his first and only opportunity for love, meaning  he has a month to accomplish these two tasks.

The book shadows his increasingly daft attempts to shoot his epic zombie movie on a shoestring budget knowing it’s his only hope of getting into film school. And also fall in love – this is hugely important to him because he’s insecure, frightened and suffering from some real body image problems, and knows that his life saving surgery is going to land him with a huge scar. The book deals with his wrestling with this negative body image, his queerness, his need for company because how will anyone ever fancy him after his surgery?

The book is a gentle mix of sex education meets love with fake zombies – in this deliciously funny gay young adult romance, the author examines themes around body image, self-acceptance and falling in love, all tucked into Jesse’s film – Zomhom- a low-budget zombie flick. Two friends Casper and Morgan help Jesse in both his quest and dealing with some of the life-threatening medical interventions that are detailed in this book, and it’s of merit to the author that such frank clarity is given to both the hospital settings and the medical interventions and Jesses feelings, fear and own bravery is explored in such tender detail, along with the support of his friends.  The surgery allows some seriously deep themes to be explored, not just self-image post-surgery, but death or survival if there is no post to the surgery! Author Hussey writes from personal experience of heart surgery and this allows an authenticity of experience to really underscore these chapters and conversations.

The book makes no secret of its narrative destination, and Casper’s hot, gay cousin is soon involved in the film and is the main romance lead here, so it’s a fairly safe ride but packed with humour and although the happyish ending suited the book; Jesses’ coming out is fine, but the author looks at how other people may be impacted by people living authentically, the ending left me feeling slightly detached from characters I’d been caring about a few chapters earlier. However, this could be your reviewers’ hard heart reasserting  itself as the book is intentionally sugary sweet.

Award winning author Hussey’s writing is infused with real LGBTQ+ stories that younger folx can relate to. Great fun, heart-warming happy every afterish storytelling for fans of young Queer romance.

Out now £8.99

For more info or to buy the book see the publishers website here: 

 

 

BOOK REVIEW: Boyslut by Zachary Zane

Posted on by Eric Page

Review by Eric Page

This warts and all, literally no holds barred combination of memoir, reflections and essays is a treat. Author Zachary Zane jerks us through the gutters, sex clubs, fabulous lays and wretched mistakes of his sex life. But it’s no mere titillating freak show, this is experience as peer learning, a seriously oversharing account of how mistakes can lead to transformation, how trauma left to fester reasserts itself in damaging habits and how breakdown can be breakthrough. From stories of drug-fuelled threesomes and risqué Grindr hook-ups to insights on dealing with rejection and living with his boyfriend and his wife, Boyslut is reassuring and occasionally funny – a testimony that we can all learn to live healthier lives unburdened by stigma.

Zane has a full octane sex life, and I wonder if anyone drawn to the book for its male bi representation might start feeling some FOMO if their own sexual adventures don’t match up to the hedonistic depictions of sex here.

We are left feeling that this most ethical of BoySluts has found himself a safe, brave space, where shame, if not banished, is at least called out, nailed to the mast and used as fuel for the engines of his fabulous fuckfest of a body. Allowing unfettered, but wise, exploration of sensual, sexual and erotic sexual practice and an utter celebration of the sensations his mind and body, fully engaged in all their skin can offer. The core of this book is acceptance, and interrogating shame. Zane wants all men not just binary, or bi men to live free. Zane is explicit in his inclusion of all forms of sexual and gender identity being considered and empowered here. His refreshing attitude towards open honesty may make a few readers grab for their pearls, but I was only offended by the overuse of exclamation marks.

Boyslut carefully points out the structures that society, upbringing, mythologies, expectations, community, family and shame have built into our minds, stopping the exhilaration and celebration of sex, and the unbridled freedom of our own minds and imagination. He looks at the effects of toxic masculinity, the damage he caused partners with clumsy attempts at fulfilment, and his relationships with his family.

His embrace of mental freedom is rooted in a rejection of shame and controlling behaviours that are self-regulated and that harm us when internalised. Boyslut shatters that, and places desire, fulfilment and queer sexual joy at the sweaty throbbing heart of our lives. If, of course, that’s what you want… One of his concepts is ‘RACK’, which is ‘risk-aware consensual kink’. RACK posits that you’re allowed to take risks when you have sex and he suggests what you need to be aware of to do that with responsibility and with awareness.

This sex and relationship columnist for men’s health brags and bares it all, the book is laid out in a series of essays that explore the author’s coming-of-age and coming out as a bisexual man and move toward embracing and celebrating sex unencumbered by shame and in this there’s some strong advice. Perhaps a little more care around advice around sexual infections and the impact of treatments and ways to avoid infections would have been welcome; in a sex positive, responsibility way.

His advice on not sharing your own mental health woes, worries or pressures with friends or loved ones is misguided and doesn’t acknowledge the deep compassion and support that can be gained through supportive friendships, but it’s a ‘bootstraps’ approach which obviously worked for him.  Although he is a huge champion of accessing intensive psychotherapy to deal with the roots of shame.

But this is not his advice column, this is a self-declared swaggering manifesto for revolution, a crowing cockfest  and a candid sweaty romp through his own filthy sex life! To throw off the shackles of shame, the niceties must go f**k.

Out now £19.99

For more info or to order the book follow this link.

 

BOOK REVIEW: Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth

Posted on by Eric Page

Review:  Eric Page

It’s the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she’s always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn’t appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend.

Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.

How to manage doing what you know is essentially, utterly the right thing for you, but every strand of your social existence has the relentless mantra beating out of its centuries of repression, conservative traditions that it’s wrong, wrong wrong.  This book whispers to us of main protagonist Lucy’s inner life of rich metaphorical emotional complexity while offering no insights into what they might want from their life.  As her lesbian feelings start to blossom, and she recognises the potential for love in her friendship group, the anxious, tension is ramped up to terrifying teenager levels brilliantly.

Sunburn offers us a peek into blistering adolescent angst, a furious fission of elemental feelings exploding, boiling and churning with huge undercurrents sending out massive uninhibited flares that disrupt expectations and apparent paths forward. Sunburn displays the real shocking power of following your heart and how that upends the world,  leaving you capable of, but equaly terrified of leaping the abyss that opens up behind you, cutting off any return to how things were; before that kiss shattered reality into a million shimmering hopes of the possible.  Sunburn shows us bad choices, wrong decisions, fear guiding us and trembling grasping for hope, and a new way of being and loving,  in such a fragile nervy writing that it left me feeling anxious.

Bit by bit, moment by moment, sensual awareness rising like a tide around her, Lucy notes what catches her eye and ears, what turns her neck, what keeps her aware and conversely what doesn’t interest her at all.  Recognizing that her friendship with handsome village boy Martin is going to stay that way but feeling the urgency excitement and heart racing anticipation whenever the focus of her desire, Susannah was close.

The book centres and revolves around the relationships between women and how they change as those women, age, change and understand themselves and the nature of their relationships more. Lucy’s interdependent friendships evolve and stretch and strain as her relationships with Susannah explodes into passion, desire, and breathless recognising of true self. They commit their feelings to each other in heart breaking letters, writing with religious zeal and rococo romance. Such trembling, quivering passions.

The relationship with her mother is beautiful wrought, full of experience, spite, anger and challenging history.  Lucy’s own narrative understands that this visceral connection might end as she grows up, grasping to comprehend her mother’s bitterness and disappointment and how her own life has been stymied by the social pressures of whispering small-town life.  Her understanding of hard choices she needs to make to give herself and her mother a future as she herself matures from girl to women is a masterclass in narrative denouement.

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Come along and hear & meet the author read from her book, on 22nd June 6:30pm @ Lucy & Yak in Kensington Gardens, Brighton as part of their Pride Month celebrations:  tickets are free, full event details and you can book here: 

You can expect:

– a celebration of queer fiction!

– an interview with the wonderful Chloe Howarth by Eric Page

– a chance to share your questions in a Q&A with the author

– the opportunity to win or purchase a copy of the book and get it signed!

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Author Howarth wraps the protagonist’s passionate inner dialog up with tender perceptions and quakeing fears, all the time the beat of truth and logic overcoming fear as our maturing protagonist realises what she is, how her budding sexuality may come to define her, and what that means to her life. It’s done with real sympathy and allows the reader to feel the strength of this character as she struggles with the suffocating small-town expectations and demands of what a good girl like her should do; marry, settle down, have kids, conform.

Allowing the book to follow the characters a little later into their lives, after the sun-drenched summer of first love, gives a real sense of completeness, a proper although not easy, happy ending of sorts as Lucy chooses life, freedom and authentic life. Honest, Out, and true.

Lucy asks clearly and with passion the question that we all ultimately may stumble on ‘whose approval is necessary to truly be myself?

A beautiful coming of age love novel written with an insightful poetical prose, rich with religious allegory and texture which underscores the transformative, spiritual power of first love explored.

Out now!

For more info or to order the book see the publisher’s website here

 

 

 

BOOK REVIEW: ‘Everything Possible’ by Fred Small (author) and Alison Brown (illus)

Posted on by Eric Page

Review by Eric Page

Inspired by a classic folk song, particularly well known to LGBTQ+ Americans, which is celebrating its fortieth anniversary, this beautifully illustrated and heart-warming picture book is a moving tribute to following your dreams. If you don’t know the song there’s an easy QR code link, which will take you to versions of the song to sing along to, along with a brand-new, free Stories Aloud audio recording with revised lyrics. The song was recorded and made famous by the iconic gay male a cappella group the Flirtations, the music travelled around the world. Author Fred Small is a passionate advocate for equality, inclusion and environmental justice.

It’s a simple, clear joyful and inclusive story about love, acceptance and following your heart. The narrative is affirming and inclusive, stating that: strong and bold, or quiet and kind, every child is unique and their future filled with possibilities. Fred Small’s iconic folk song became an anthem for generations and this book grows out of that space and into a story about celebrating difference and potential. It’s a superb book for LGBTQ+ parents who are looking for inclusive, fun and easy read material for their families.

Everything Possible celebrates love and friendship, gently encouraging children to dream their own dream and choose their own path, wherever it may take them.

The colourful illustrations from Alison Brown offer a visually all-encompassing unconditional loving narrative that supports both song and story, and celebrates the diversity of younger people, letting them ‘see themselves’ in the inspiring and uplifting stories.

This sensible, empowering picture book is perfect for children everywhere and is another great book from publishers Nosy Crow. All their picture books come with a free Stories Aloud audio reading.

All together now:

‘You can be anybody you want to be,

You can love whomever you will

You can travel any country where your heart leads

And know I will love you still

You can live by yourself, you can gather friends around,

You can choose one special one

And the only measure of your words and your deeds

Will be the love you leave behind when you’re done’

Out now, £7.99

For more info or to buy the book see the publisher’s website here: 

Fringe REVIEW: SÉAYONCÉ RES-ERECTION: THE SECOND CUMMIN

Posted on by Eric Page

SÉAYONCÉ RES-ERECTION: THE SECOND CUMMIN

Spiegeltent Bosco

Friday 2nd June

Review Eric Page

The baddest bitch in the spirit world is back, the legendary Ghost Whisperer Séayoncé. Striding the stage like a camp mash up of Tim Currys diction, Joan Crawford’s pose and Mystic Meg’s psychic powers, strafing the audience with relentless deliciously twisted put downs and tortured puns we are instantly enchanted by this pair of perfectly balanced chanteuses.

Music extraordinaire Lesley Anne (Robyn Herfellow) joins as an utterly charming psychotic pianist, underscoring and subtly teasing  all of us, with guttural utterances, and some perfectly timed chords. Such marvellous malevolent menace emanating from them.

Ghouls just want to have fun,  Séayoncé feels it’s time we did too and hauls us through the thin veil between worlds, connecting and being possessed by a desperate soul haunting the festival. We analyse its poor queer trauma, all learning lessons from its fear. This is a masterclass  in living while we can from someone deep in the world of the dead. What better way to feel alive again than with a big throbbing res-erection?

Then it’s time for a little Queer exorcism, some funny and farcical body swap campery and onwards full steam into a full audience participation musical. It’s a roller-coaster ride, we throw caution to the wind, certainly don’t want to upset Lesley, and want to work together to save a lost Queer soul. You’ll need to go along to see how that all works out.

There’s a small number of Mediums at large at the moment and one of the biggest, in stature if not ego, is our very own Seayoncé. Ready to blow your mind and anything else those twisted lips can reach,  she’s evidence that a happy medium doesn’t exist.

Wrapping us up in extensional terror, tantalising teasing and urgent affirmations to live authentically, making us laugh with enjoyable homophonic bon mots and always, always getting the pun-chline right. These are superbly crafted jokes, burst out laughing filthy ones, ones that ripples across the audience as different groups ‘get’ them, quick fire, groaning ones,  ones which make you laugh all night and still today, and a few perfect Queer lines to steal! To say Wye is genius would be to feed his ego, so let’s just say they’re really rather good and when they’re bad they’re better.

Photo credit Zé Meirinhos

Created by Dan Wye, a throbbing Queer star on the comedy scene. This mysterious fusion of stand-up, cabaret and drag elevates alternative comedy and queer performance to a cosmic level. Séayoncé brings a winning combination of brilliant comedic timing, daft theatrics and provocative audience interaction to a packed Bosco tent, and we rise to it.  We leave affirmed, celebrated, utterly Seen, knitted together, fired up and most of all entertained after a full hour of laughing, or 50 mins of laughing and 10 of appreciating some rather clever songs which help to nudge the narrative to it’s absurd sustaining conclusion. With some searing and brutal social commentary thrown in, with laughs, this is comedy with it’s heart in the right place. A fully inclsuice Queer Space.

I’m no psychic but I know the final show is this evening, catch it if you can.

Until 3rd June

For more info or to book see the Brighton Spiegeltent website here:

 

 

FRINGE REVIEW: MYTHOS: RAGNAROK

Posted on by Eric Page

MYTHOS: RAGNAROK

Caravanserai

Brighton Fringe

Review by Eric Page

What do you get when you mix Viking Norse mythology,  a lot of metallic golden lycra, some seriously hot bodies, delicious filthy comedy, a throbbing sound track and some wicked masks?  MYTHOS: RAGNAROK is what, one of the Fringes weirdest mashup’s in a festival known for strange combinations. This show utterly lives up to its publicity: Epic dark comedy combining Norse mythological storytelling with full-contact wrestling.

We join Odin and Loki in their struggle to overcome primeval giants, rival Gods and Goddesses, and each another’s ambitions in this dark comic adaption of classic Norse mythology, you might think you know about it from Marvel films, but this is raw myth, steaming, sweating, unvarnished for our modern minds, and all the better for it.

Weaving ancient myths, legends, and classic wrestling together Mythos create some of the most intense and thrilling fight scenes in the history of theatre, it’s live physical improvisation. The audience choose their sides, Brighton is fickle, as much in love with the evil as with the apparently good, we just want a good show, and an amazing Gun Show.

Odin leads us through his story and he could lead me though any story he wanted, I was transfixed by his abdomen muscles bellowing in and out as he loudly declaimed his story. In fact each and every one of his perfectly thick tattooed muscles flexing transfixed me, and quite a few other people in the audience, but let’s not swoon yet, that’s undignified.

See full tour  details here:

Yes this is prime beefcake, and magnificent LadyCake too, but with its tongue firmly in the cheeks. Odin plays it ‘straight’ which works very well, Locki is played with polysexual mischievous delights, every opportunity for a filthy innuendo taken and squeezed hard, this is hot lithe trickster god, the rest of the excellent diverse cast have fun with their amoral characters traits and vain power-hungry impulses and work off each other, working in random shouts from the audience, and showing off their talents, physical and otherwise with a wicked shameless charm.  I’m no expert on wrestling, but playing out the epic battles of the myths via wrestling matches works really well. There’s some stunning, jaw dropping fight choreography here, appearing vicious, hard, horrible, but always with extra loud thuds and crashs as the falls mount up. Adapting the narrative battles to the physical wrestling is brilliant to watch, gets your pulse up as you roar for your own brand of hero, and really keeps you engaged in the storyline as it unfolds. Most of us know, kind of, what happens to this lot of entitled ancient warriors and self-appointed gods, here we see them writhe and fight like spandex and leather clad marauding Kardashians in the Thunderdome.

It’s great fun, easy on the eye, funny as hell and one of the best fringe shows I’ve seen this year.

Myths were never meant to be read in books or watched on screens. They were crafted over hundreds of years to be performed live by story-tellers: to be felt, experienced and lived-through with an audience. This is what we have served up by the creator of the show Ed Gamester (he of the stunning thicc bod) who has found a way to bring wrestling to new audiences and reawaken mythologies in unexpected but attention keeping way.

You can learn more about Ed here on his website

Myths are more than stories: they express what it feels like to be alive and explain our experiences of the world around us. Myths prove we are no further away from our ancestors than a few carefully chosen words; engaging with mythology tugs at the threads that bind us together through history. This show, all throbbing muscle and wrestling on top holds a seriously affirming message at heart; that together we triumph, that death awaits us all at the end, that wicked or good we all end up the same and watching something together, shouting, feeling, being thrilled by a troupe of excellent physical actors and comedians as they share a gripping story is an excellent way to spend an evening.

We went for the eye candy, but left thrilled, enchanted and seriously entertained. If you’ve not seen it, run now to book.

Until Sat 3rd

Book tickets now, on the Fringe Website here

 

 

 

 

 

 

REVIEW: Celestial Voices @ The Old Market (Brighton Festival)

Posted on by Eric Page

Words by Eric Page

Celestial Voices {Swargiya Awaz} is a concert from BISHI with solo material for voice and electric sitar from their most recent album Let My Country Awake. Their introduction takes in the richness of their diverse cultural and ethnic heritage, deftly highlighting the commonalities that inspire and thread through their complex and clear music.

Photo credit Claire Leach

We have layered sounds – the voice of BISHI has real tone and giddy range; the harmonies as tight as the latex outfit, which amplifies the sumptuous curves as the voice is amplified and arcs around it. All is soft, bound – movement, flesh, sensuality, vocality, thought. This is not a music concert but an experience, an invitation (and invocation?) to sing of the body electric with a person whose cultural currents are strong. We plug in and are powered up.

BISHI is empowerment and graciousness defined, it’s been a while since I’ve seen such an evidently talented person be so humble on stage. It’s a beautiful pose, drawing in and acknowledging the various people and influences that have helped build the music, focused on dual identities, anti-racism, and a call to find empathy in a divided world.

We are introduced to their novel experience of the pandemic and how lockdown led to a new way of being and producing music and a meeting of minds, music, voices and intent.

A British Bengali vocalist and composer, BISHI’s writing style was built around experimentation and improvisation. They impress with a four octave vocal range, inspired by plaintive chant, pastoral folk, Meredith Monk, Bulgarian music, and Indian Classical music.

BISHI starts to sing again, voice layered on voice, this is a loop pedal masterclass. There’s a madrigal element to the music, the electric sitar weaving, the dissonance hovers on dragonfly wings before diving in and out of harmonies, behind the undulating person singing on stage. Simple reductive, repetitive visuals are projected, their looped unfolding adding a visually compelling background to the enveloping music. From the crepuscular wings the choir Trans Voices joins us: six beautiful, modulated voices step in from each side of the stage, adding their own song and harmonies to the whole. It’s beautiful, the sound empowers, the voices own each octave and harmonic frequency, all together they sing of humanity. I’m touched, surprised by how moved I am. I look around, I’m not the only one being affected. It’s joyful.

Learn more about Trans Voices here

One of my favourite folk songs, The Three Ravens, is sung, again the voices swoop, merge and meet again, the melancholic melodies sliding past each other, catching on memories of joy, dissecting musical privilege and finding it wanting, creating a new space of vocal interaction, reminding us of the diversity of voice and the deeply personal embodiment of ourselves in our voices. The singers of Trans Voices look enchanted, literally possessed by the music, they rock, smile, gesticulate, the whole emulating the rhythms of the music. They sing of the fragility of life, their voices pound out the vitality of living fully, tight harmonies concur with being fully present. They slide into a delicious witchy vocal folk from The Wicker Man, it’s wonderful, fun, dangerous, beguiling.

The final piece, a choral pieces arranged especially for Trans Voices, Of Herculine, leads us again into the high ethereal vaults of polished culture served up as a simple melodic interaction, but this is fierce, complex and liberating. The lyrics lead us off into a space of redemption, where just by being there we have arrived. The song hints at resolve, but leaps again, harmonies feel for each other, nod, then shift, it’s chromatic but feels so simple. It calls to us, something inside of us, the largely queer audience felt that pull strong. After they finish, there’s a hushed silence before rapturous applause thunders across the Old Market. This new choral piece is inspired by the life of Herculine Barbin, whose birth date globally marks Intersex Day of Remembrance, raising awareness of the violence inherent in the binary sex and gender system.

A super night from Brighton Festival, possibly the most interesting intersectional cultural evening I’ve attended in a long time, full of beauty, cultural fertilisation, invocation, innovation and pure raw beauty. There’s always ‘that experience’ at the Festival where you leave thinking, ‘now that’s what a Festival should be’. Tonight’s performance of Celestial Voices is THE performance of the Festival for me. One I’m so very glad I had the opportunity to witness and be part of.

Thank you Trans Voices, thanks you BISHI, now please book yourselves another gig down here ASAP.

The gig was opened and closed by experimental and pretty darn cool DJ I Am Fyr, founding member of DJ collective Sista Selecta and of the afro-futurist collective, Brownton Abbey, leaving us in the best possible mood for the rest of our weekend. We wander out into the warm spring evening with a downe, derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe.

More info on this event here

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