A young gay man is beaten up by local thugs IN a DARK street. Both in drama and in reality; and it’s no coincidence that it features in both of the big mainstage shows playing in Edinburgh this week, at the Festival and Playhouse theatres it’s a common scene. In Cabaret, it is the rise of Nazi physical violence in the streets of 1930s Berlin; as well as in Priscilla Queen associated with Desert, it’s a number of rednecks in a tiny town when you look at the Australian bush using it away on Adam (also called Felicia), the young Sydney drag queen who may have accompanied our hero Tick and their older trans buddy Bernadette on a riotous coach journey across Australia to Alice Springs, where Tick – now likewise a drag queen in Sydney – wants to reconnect because of the the son he fathered during a short youthful wedding.

Priscilla Queen regarding the Desert, Playhouse, Edinburgh **** | Still No clue, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh ****

Joe McFadden, Miles Western and Nick Hayes celebrate all of the camp joys of drag

On the basis of the famous 1994 movie – with book by Stephan Elliott and Allan Scott – the 2006 phase musical type of Priscilla is just a celebratory show that is coming-out excellence, revelling into the freedom to place queer tradition centre phase, and celebrate most of the super-camp joys of drag. This latest British touring version, featuring Joe McFadden, Miles Western and Nick Hayes catches all that exuberance that is explosive although Charles Cusick-Smith’s costumes are occasionally thus far within the top as to look more pantomime dame than glamorous drag queen.

McFadden acts beautifully as Tick (aka Mitzi del Bra), although he appears a color less confident with the dance; and there’s effective help perhaps not just from their two other queens, but from Daniel Fletcher as Bernadette’s new admirer Bob, plus the three fabulous singing divas – Aiesha Pease, Claudia Kariuki and Rosie Glossop – who work as guardian angels.

There clearly was a presssing problem in regards to the portrayal of non-trans women in this show;

Tick’s estranged wife scarcely features, so that as for Bob’s soon-discarded mail-order bride from Thailand – well, the language offensive label barely protect it. Yet it’s difficult to resist a show that expresses therefore much joy, and such an exciting feeling of a journey towards freedom; and Priscilla’s splendid magpie playlist of good tracks through the 80s and previous – which range from Go western to I Will Survive – makes the show an irresistible good particular date, with impressive help from musical manager Sean Green, and a seven-strong real time band whose brilliant music-making raises the Playhouse roof.

Then people with disabilities often fall victim to the same kind of politics; and despite their light-touch, comedy-duo style, there’s a memorable element of serious political warning in Lisa Hammond and Rachael Spence’s powerful show Still No Idea, co-scripted with director Lee Simpson if gay and trans people have often been victims of oppressive regimes and attitudes.

First produced nine years ago as No Idea, the show recounts just exactly what occurred whenever Hammond – an actress that is four-foot a wheelchair – and Spence, a performer of strikingly “normal” look, sought out into the roads of London to inquire about individuals exactly what their show must be about.

The findings had been slightly chilling, with interviewees initially determined that Lisa – together with her “cheeky face” – should be the primary character, but, definitely struggling to compose her into a narrative, after they had been expected to assume the way the tale should develop.

Plus in this brand new form of the show, Hammond and Spence explore not just just how this experience ended up being replicated, for Hammond, whenever she became a cast user of the “long-running fictional drama https://latinsingles.org/ukrainian-brides/ ukrainian brides for marriage series” – and then realize that her character was never because of the main storylines she ended up being guaranteed – but also how a situation has deteriorated throughout the decade that is last. The last image is of a age of deep cuts in impairment benefits, growing general public punishment regarding the disabled, and a smug assumption in certain circles – not least in theatre – that the difficulty of addition for disables individuals has been sorted.

All of it appears a bit more bearable, however, seen through the prism of Hammond and Spence’s effective relationship: things are tough, claims this peaceful but hard-hitting show, but never completely without hope, or without humour.