“If all opera addressed real contemporary experiences in exciting, dramatic and funny ways, it would sell out faster than a Lizzo concert” BY FELICITAS SOPHIE VAN LAAK On 8 November 2019, the Belfast Ensemble opens Belfast’s Outburst Queer Arts Festival with Abomination: A DUP Opera, composed by Conor Mitchell. The show fuses opera performance with [….]
Playwright Hattie Naylor tells DIVA why she’s chosen to adapt Sarah Waters’ classic novel for the stage BY FELICITAS SOPHIE VAN LAAK. IMAGE: MARA ALLEN AS MICKEY AND PHOEBE PRYCE AS KAY CREDIT MARK DOUET. Olivier-nominated playwright Hattie Naylor’s stage adaptation of The Night Watch is the first revival of the novel since 2016. Currently [….]
Playwright Isobel McArthur on her adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice and the lesbian love story in this beloved novel BY CARRIE LYELL AND FELICITAS SOPHIE VAN LAAK When Isobel McArthur first graduated from drama school, the choice of roles she could audition for was limited. Consequently, she began to write her own relatable, [….]
“An ordinary day underpinned by hidden woes, troubles and desires” BY EMILY SHEWELL, IMAGES ELTON TOWNEND JONES Elton Townend Jones’ stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s classic novel Mrs Dalloway perfectly encapsulates life in the interwar period: the parties, the dreams and the surfacing anxieties in the aftermath of the Great War. It’s June 1923. The [….]
Emily Garside looks ahead to the London premiere of this important musical and asks why lesbians have been left out of Aids narratives in popular culture BY EMILY GARSIDE William Finn premiered his one-act musical Trousers off-Broadway in 1979. Two years later, collaborating with James Lapine, Finn created two additional one-acts, March of the Falsettos [….]
A “clever and darkly funny” reimagining of Hamlet BY LEXI CLARE The audience enters to an atmosphere that is relaxed and energised; the cast swig from cans and good-naturedly banter with each other, batting a shuttlecock back and forth across a grass turf (and occasionally into the lighting rig). A rainbow-coloured paddling pool takes centre [….]
Jane Fae recommends this “rarest of rarities”, a queer female love story BY JANE FAE How We Begin has finished. Too soon! Too soon. For this two-hander of a play is that rarest of rarities: a queer female love story getting an outing to a London audience. At the King’s Head Theatre in Islington, since [….]
