Theatre review: Dumbledore Is So Gay

It probably won't come as much of a surprise that, despite having heard nothing but good things about Robert Holtom's Dumbledore Is So Gay from its earlier fringe runs, I was still very much in two minds about whether to book for its new run at Southwark Playhouse. As someone who was a Harry Potter fan, and who even though an adult when the books were first published derived some comfort from the stories at difficult times, it's something that's been very tainted in recent years by the author's views, and that I've been happy to cut out of my life (quite successfully as it turns out - I don't think I'd realised I'd have quite so little warmth left for the play's references to the books and films.) It's particularly grimly ironic that Holtom writes about the series' appeal to LGBTQ+ people, and the way it helps a young queer boy find his identity.

Theatre review: Fucking Men

A big fringe hit a few years back, Joe DiPietro's Fucking Men is a take on Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde, the controversial 1920 play about a series of one-night stands that form a circle of people who find different kinds of comfort or release in sex. I don't think DiPietro's is the only version to have ever made the leap of adapting the story for gay characters, but it seems to have been by far the most successful. Past productions have been quite luxurious in their casting, with a different actor playing each of the ten characters, but some things have changed since 2008, including fringe venues' attitudes towards actually paying actors, so for Steve Kunis' revival at Waterloo East we get a cast of four, taking two or three parts each. Alex Britt, Charlie Condou, Derek Mitchell and Stanton Plummer-Cambridge are the cast taking on a series of variously sexy, funny and sad scenes.