Paul T Davies reviews Love Song To Lavender Menace at Summerhall as part of the Edinburgh Fringe.
Matthew McVarish and Pierce Reid in Love Song to Lavender Menace Love Song to Lavender Menace. Summerhall, Edinburgh Fringe
17 August 2018
4 Stars
Lavender Menace was the legendary LGBTQ book shop in Edinburgh, and this hugely enjoyable production pays loving tribute to the shop and it's co-founders. It's wildly nostalgic for those of us who lived through the 1980s, and hugely informative for those of us from outside the city.
James Ley's play uses two actors who play Glen and Lewis, co-workers leaving the shop when it closes down, and through their memories we get the history. Matthew McVarish is adorable as Glen, happy to play the fool and camp it up, a perfect foil for Pierce Reid's Lewis, a drama queen and intellectual who wants them to stick to the facts. Together they create not a dull moment, they are hugely entertaining and dance to a terrific beat. The play is also a love song to literature and to gay spaces where we could feel safe and less alone
Before we become too nostalgic, the 80s were also a time of AIDS, Thatcher and Section 28, all referenced in the play. The sub plot of a closeted married man felt a little overwhelming of the rest of the story, but that may be because the play has been edited for the Fringe schedule. However, it makes the point about the importance of a safe place very well. This is a wonderful, celebratory LGBTQ play , which expained why I'm drawn to Waterstones on Princess Street!
BOOK TICKETS TO LOVE SONG TO LAVENDER MENACE
Paul is a playwright, director, actor, academic, (he has a PhD from the University of East Anglia), teacher and theatre reviewer! His plays include Living with Luke, (UK tour 2016), Play Something, (Edinburgh Festival Fringe/Drayton Arms Theatre, London 2018), , (2019), and now The Miner’s Crow, which won the inaugural Artist’s Pick of the Fringe Award at the first ever Colchester Fringe Festival 2021. In lockdown 2020 he created the audio series Isolation Alan, available on Youtube, and performed online in the Voice Box Festival. He is the founder member of Stage Write, a Colchester based theatre company, and his acting roles include Rupert in How We Love by Annette Brook, first performed at the Vaults Festival 2020 and revived at the Arcola and at Theatre Peckham in 2021. Follow: @stagewrite_
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