The primrose pastiche… Her Aching Heart, The Hope Theatre, Islington

The love that binds... Photo Roy Tan

As I was leaving university someone left two bundles of Mills & Boon books in my pigeon hole both with professions of love. Who left them and for what reason I shall never know… I did once accuse my friend Noel but he looked at me with a mix of “what a great idea” and “damn, why didn’t I think of it?” Even then M&B were a cliché and if you were genuinely holding a candle for someone are those the books you’d leave? Perhaps…

Playwright Bryony Lavery is well aware of the fun to be had in digging between the pages of this passionate pulp – books for people in love with the idea of love - and wrote this musical comedy with a delicious twist that is not intended to undermine the genre’s enduring formalism but to enhance it: it’s all about the love. Well… that and glove puppets, bodices – ripped and otherwise - a little bit of swordplay and imaginary horses.

Our lovers are played by Naomi Todd – a mesmerising Molly - and Colette Eaton – a hypnotic Harriet – who show remarkable versatility in the playing of many roles always never forgetting to fall in love all over again in whatever magnificent costume or far-flung field they inhabit in the play’s intricately-woven narrative.

Naomi changes chapters. Photo Roy Tan

It's like an all-girl version of Enchanted with the two women both reading the same book and living out its florid passages as they struggle to connect in a real world in which “nice” is the best – the nicest – word their nervous interactions will allow.

In the world of the book – Her Aching Heart: A Lesbian Historical Romance – their characters find voice for excessive expression with Harriet mostly being Lady Harriet Hellstone of Hellstone Hall and Molly being a simple peasant lass with a Disney-esque way with nature: ‘taint a broken creature she can’t fix not even a disembowelled baby roe deer (don’t panic: it’s just a glove puppet… with guts!).

Colette sings and dreams. Photo Roy Tan

Throughout Ian Brandon’s songs are sung well and true – there’s nothing these women can’t do! – and all are West-End worthy: a rousing mix of the sweet and the sour. Harriet belts out the opener, Uninvited, as she drinks a broken heart a little better… “why aren’t you here?” and then, dropping from the roof: a book! She starts to read.

Meanwhile Molly has a dream – a nun in a nightmare - we don’t know who she is yet but she gradually emerges as a simple, in comically-complex ways, girl fond of signalling changes in direction with balletically-exaggerated armography.  Both performances are marked by great attention to such details and they effortlessly glide along the perilous path between slapstick and pitch-perfect pastiche.

Colette, Naomi and that glove puppet. Photo Roy Tan

Lady Hellstone is “an empty shell” missing a heart and rebelling against plans to marry her off to the foppish Lord Rothermere (no relation to the hate-mongering Daily Mail owner, maybe). She lives a life of noble detachment until “following the fox and trying to lose herself in the hunt”, she chances upon the lovely Molly. The peasant girl wants to save the fox but – no! – her dress gets snagged on some thorns and she and the puppet-prey are at the mercy of the hellish Lady Hellstone. But something sparks between the two and Harriet resolves to save the animal too.

But Reynard gets ripped and as blood-drenched hands stretch out in desperate apology, Molly resolves to really, really hate Harriet and the Lady reciprocates. These girls really, really hate each other. No, they really do. Really.

Harriet complains to her brassy blonde maid (a quickly-changed Naomi) whilst Molly vents to her bent-backed grandma (Colette). Every so often the dream-story is punctured by phone calls as the girls tentatively edge their relationship forward in the real world to which we often shift with a mood-puncturing “fuck it!”. The language of love is deeper in meaning no matter the words we use.

Harriet's maid counts the ways... Photo Roy Tan

All of this could go horribly wrong in the hands of less accomplished performers and both Todd and Eaton are so convincingly at ease they filled the intimate space of the Hope with a blissful glow. Working so close in with an audience occasionally pulled into the action – I sat next to a “powdered Lady” from a Hellstone dinner party (I went home with her too) – there’s no margin for error but the masks didn’t drop for a second.

Watch out for these two for they will go very far.

I loved these interactions and the ad-libs: but most of all I loved the love (to almost quote the great Tina Charles): no matter how cynical a time you’re having you’ll forget all about it in seconds in the Hope. Love is the drug (to exactly quote Bryan Ferry).

Bryony Lavery – who had flown in to see this performance - is best known for her hard-hitting drama’s such as Frozen – but here she shows a comic touch that, in my limited experience, I’ve only seen from the likes of Mr Sondheim.

Promotional shot from Roy Tan

Her Aching Heart plays until 23^rd December, it is exceptional theatre and the perfect way to help end an otherwise miserable 2016 with songs lifting your step and love warming your heart.

Expertly directed by Hope Theatre boss Matthew Parker, this is not just the best period lesbian musical in London but one of the best musicals full stop! After watching Molly and Harriet follow their pastiched pathway to each other’s hearts I think I’ve fallen too…

Book now at the Hope’s website: it’s only a few minutes from Highbury Tube and there’s a marvellous pub crawl in prospect if you walk along from The Angel!

Ithankyou Theatre Rating: *****

Such fun!

"Give me a rose to show how much you care…" Savage, Above The Arts Theatre

A rose is a rose… you can’t turn a rose into an orchid and it’s a rose, so why would you ever want to.

Claudio Macor’s latest play tackles the attempts by Danish Doctor Carl Peter Vaernet to cure homosexuality. He believed – against almost all medical and psychiatric advice of the time - that same-sex attraction was a disease which could therefore be medicated, treated and “eradicated… He believed that by injecting testosterone into both testicles, without anaesthetic of course, he could alter the laws of attraction.

Naturally the Nazi’s were highly interested in this barbarous tinkering and supported the mad Dane in his experimentation in the hope of freeing more room in concentration camps for other “deserving” minorities. Sadly, even when the war was over, the British also sensed an angle and funded his flight to Argentina where he died, un-ashamed in 1965.

But what of the lives and loves his merciless needles ruined? Macor prefers to believe in the Doctor’s ultimate failure as love holds stronger than the sharpest needle and the most painful procedure. More than this love conquers even the Nazi’s themselves as one of those abused strides off in proud defiance leaving his closeted lover and abuser to face his conscience alone.

This is an unflinching, honest play that is strongly played by a physically and emotionally fearless cast. At a time when even one of the would-be leaders of British government once supported the cause of a modern day “gay cure” it’s a reminder how cautious we must always be in accepting progress: vigilance, understanding and compassion must define any contemporary culture.

The play starts in stunning fashion in The Corner Light night club,  as the host Georg Jensen (Lee Knight) performs Lili Marlene gradually pulling off his drag as the words stick in his throat with the realisation that he must leave his love and all this behind. Denmark legalised homosexuality in the thirties but once they accepted German occupation in 1940 everything changed.

The song is a cry for loss of love and liberty made all the more passionate by our knowledge of what comes next. It’s a German song but nationality doesn’t matter; only truth and joy.

For you, lili Marleen, For you, lili Marleen

Two lovers leave the club, American Embassy attaché Zach (Nic Kyle) and Danish art gallery worker Nikolai (Alexander Huetson); they are walking a dangerous line in this new cultural reality and as they share what a few months ago would have been acceptable affections, they know the future is bleak. They talk of the future and ways to escape to be together but a stray embrace is caught in a spotlight and they are arrested.

We cut to the surgery of Doctor Carl Peter Værnet (Gary Fannin – late of the Reduced Shakespeare Company) and his prim nurse Ilse Paulsen (Emily Lynne) for whom looks will prove to be deceptive.  Værnet’s loony tune is sexual normalisation via genital injection… the practice being a perfect signifier of the intent.

A deal for the Doctor

Eager to invest in medical experimentation the Germans are all too willing to provide gay guinea pigs. General Heinrich Von Aechelman (Bradley Clarkson – Jimmy from Macor and Andrea Leoncini’s wonderful tribute to silent film great Billy Haines, The Tailor-Made Man!)  brings Nikolai to the surgery and with his approaches to Ilse and plan for sexual-cleansing he appears to be a full-blooded, compassion-free Aryan… and yet, the General is quite different at home.

He has “rescued” Georg for his personal service and the two enjoy a bizarre relationship of necessity – the General genuinely feels for his man but you sense the true power is always with the defiant younger man: even imprisoned and with no chance of escape Georg never submits his soul.

Meanwhile, the Doctor brings out his big needle and in the play’s most painful sequence we see his operation on a desperate Nikolai. It’s hard to watch but well done to Alexander Huetson lets rip in the most convincing fashion. As a man we were squirming in our seats but this actually happened: people were stupid enough to believe this would work and callous enough to put it into practice.

The result is proclaimed as a success by the deluded Doctor as he presents Nikolai with another naked prisoner – Georg. Nikolai’s failure to respond is hailed as proof of concept even though the poor man can barely stand. Now we see Ilse’s true colours as she rescues Nikolia who is not “cured” but broken, incapable of survival on his own. She contacts Zach… who telephones his man from America but as the years roll and the war progresses… is there hope? Will even Zach and Mikolai’s love survive the Doctor's brutal injections…?

Post war, British Major Ronald Hemingway (Christopher Hines) interviews the Doctor and is intrigued enough by his “cure” to affect his escape to Argentina… 

Gary Fannin and Emily Lynne

The plays relationships wax and wane with their components breaking and falling whilst some remain true. Zach escapes to America but he still suffers in a different way to Nikolai whilst the General wants the one he does have... but can never truly possess. The Doctor’s relationship to his subjects, co-workers, collaborators all vary and yet it is his relationship to the truth that never wanes. He is deluded in the most self-absorbed way and the play doesn’t need to linger on his motivations: they remain obscure, fatuous and hateful.

The cast generates an almost frightening intensity in the close proximity of the Arts Theatre's upstairs stage. Lee Knight makes for a defiant diva whose sensitivity is matched by his strength and glamour (strength through glamour: there's one you never thought of Herr Goebbels!) whilst Bradley Clarkson gives his General a tragic desire behind his cowardly devotion to duty: no wonder his character hates blondes.

Lee Knight and Bradley Clarkson

Nic Kyle’s Zach exudes positivity and get-up-and-go which increasingly runs counter to Nikolai’s torments: Alexander Huetson’s role was physically the most demanding and gives the play a visceral unease that brings the audience closer to its subject.

Emily Lynne’s Ilse offers sympathy and the quiet rage of a nurse forced into acts that harm not heal whilst Gary Fannin’s Doctor is a man adrift from morality and confounded by delusion. There is also vibrant support from young Kristian Simeonov as Goran – a cabaret dancer turned soldier and Christopher Hines as Major Ronald Hemingway whose British charm hides his hollow opportunism.

Alexander Huetson and Nic Kyle

Human rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell explains in the introduction to the play how he had uncovered this story. It took him some time to persuade the Danish authorities to release papers concerning Værnet’s crimes and, as yet no explanation or apology has been forthcoming from either Denmark or Britain for allowing this war criminal to escape justice.

The play ends with the image of Doctor Carl Peter Værnet projected on the stage – we know you now sir and we won’t forget you. Nor will we easily forget this play.

Savage plays until 30th July and tickets are still available here but you better be quick! In these times of unrelenting press propaganda and a push towards more narrow-band nationalism it’s a vital, challenging night out - one that will leave you shaken, stirred and resolute.