Theatre review: Torch Song

Have you ever felt like a theatre's gaslighting you? It's how I felt when the new Turbine Theatre announced its launch show as Harvey Fierstein's iconic 1970s gay play Torch Song, and none of the articles leading up to the production seemed to acknowledge that it's much better known as Torch Song Trilogy. It turns out that no I'm not going mad, yes that is the title of the 1970s play cycle, and yes there is a distinction: This is in fact the 2017 version of the script that Fierstein made significant cuts to, the slight title change differentiating between the two texts. Not that Drew McOnie's production departs from the original structure, even announcing the original plays' titles in neon signs over Ryan Dawson Laight's set. It's a story whose cast grows as it goes on, so opening act "International Stud" lights up just on drag queen Arnold (Matthew Needham) as he gets changed after a show, confessing to the audience how much he longs for a man he truly belongs with in the hedonistic underworld of gay '70s Manhattan.

Theatre review: The White Carnation

Not actually a play about evaporated milk, The White Carnation sees the Finborough Theatre find another seasonally-appropriate show from the archives - this time a Christmas ghost story. Although we're not really in for thrills and chills here because the ghost is the central character, and his behaviour is resolutely non-spooky. John Greenwood was a wealthy stockbroker, killed along with his wife and friends by a German bomb during a Christmas Eve party. For the next six years the ruins of his townhouse are haunted by the party being played out again every December 24th, but on the seventh year they don't all disappear at midnight: Greenwood (Aden Gillett) is left behind, believing no time to have passed, and wondering why the police are accusing him of breaking into his own house. He still has a physical body but like the flower in his buttonhole he doesn't age, and he doesn't show up in photos.