Theatre review: What It Means

American screenwriter, journalist and novelist Merle Miller became a major figure in the gay rights movement largely - if this adaptation of his most famous essay and subsequent memoir is to be believed - by accident. A decorated World War II veteran who'd been blacklisted by McCarthyites and returned his medals in protest at the Vietnam War, he'd been a fervent but understated kind of radical. When James Corley’s What It Means first joins him, he’s holed up in his rural New York State house on the day of one of the first post-Stonewall gay rights marches in Manhattan: It’s close enough for him to join easily, but he doesn’t think that’s his kind of activism. But in 1970 Harper’s Magazine, of which he’d been editor before getting, he implies, pushed out, publishes a lengthy article about sexuality by a straight writer.

Theatre review: World's End

With its 1990s-set teenage gay romance in neighbouring flats of a London tower block (albeit in Chelsea rather than Thamesmead,) World’s End invites inevitable comparisons to Beautiful Thing. Actor James Corley’s playwriting debut lacks the relatable characters to have anything like the same impact on audiences, but it does have its moments. In late 1998, Viv (Patricia Potter) returns to London after two failed marriages and many years of constant moving around; she rents the tiny flat next to Ylli (Nikolaos Brahimllari,) an Albanian widower and once-aspiring artist who now takes odd jobs in security. Both have 19-year-old sons, Viv’s new one-bedroom flat meaning Ben (Tom Milligan) has to sleep in the living room, where he locks himself away most of the time playing on his new Playstation. Besnick (Mirlind Bega) is more socially confident, and while perhaps not technically out to his disapproving father seems unfazed by Ylli’s occasional digs at his effeminacy.

Theatre review: Twelfth Night (Custom/Practice / Lion & Unicorn)

You're never more than ten feet away from a production of Twelfth Night, so another one is rarely the most exciting prospect. On the other hand, what's the point of discovering companies that show promise if you don't follow up on it? I pretty much stumbled upon Rae McKen's company Custom/Practice with their Dream last summer, and now they turn to Shakespeare's story of boy/girl identical twins washed ashore in a foreign land after a shipwreck, each unaware that the other has survived, and getting caught up in the escapades of lovestruck Orsino, grieving Olivia, and the latter's household of drunks and fools. McKen's production is modern-dress, and she hasn't quite found an alternative setting that works for the story; much more successful though is the way the characters are adapted around having a particularly young cast (two are still at Italia Conti.)