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Bear with me: Sun Bear @ParkTheatre

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If The Light House is an uplifting tale of survival, Sarah Richardson’s Sun Bear gives a contrasting take on this. Sarah plays Katy. We’re introduced to Katy as she runs through a list of pet office peeves with her endlessly perky coworkers, particularly about coworkers stealing her pens. It’s a hilarious opening monologue that would have you wishing you had her as a coworker to help relieve you from the boredom of petty office politics.  But something is not quite right in the perfect petty office, where people work together well. And that is her. And despite her protesting that she is fine, the pet peeves and the outbursts are becoming more frequent. As the piece progresses, maybe the problem lies in a past relationship, where Katy had to be home by a particular hour, not stay out late with office colleagues and not be drunk enough not to answer his calls. Perhaps the perky office colleagues are trying to help, and perhaps Katy is trying to reach out for help. It has simple staging

Changes: Drag King Richard III @RiversideLondon

Drag King Richard III, playing this week at Riverside Studios, tackles Shakespeare and transgender issues with mixed effects. But you can't fault the performances and the style of the piece.

There are some clever moments that use music and dance to bring out the issues of the story. Even more remarkable is that the two performers - Anne Zander and Bonnie Adair - had only a few days to work with the material following some last minute cast changes.

Pieces from Shakespeare's Richard III are woven into this exploration of transgender identity, giving new meaning to the text, but perhaps greater attention on characterisation and less on the Shakespeare text might have made for a more rewarding evening.
The story centres around Laurie. Born biologically female but feels all her life that she is living in the wrong body. This causes complications for school friend La Femme, a butch lesbian who enjoys dressing in femme drag.

It really helps to brush up on your lesbian terminology if you are not familiar with it. Laurie is stone (butch). I only knew what that meant after a gang of lesbian bikers I sat next to at a Pride festival many years ago decided to enlighten me and my delicate friends about their subculture many years ago. I found my mind wandering about the gory details they divulged on that day until a piece in your face choreography snapped my mind back to attention.

But back to the piece, La Femme finds it difficult to accept that Laurie is becoming Laurence, and the challenges of making such a change are brought to the fore, drawing on their past shared history and the Shakespearean text.

In the programme notes the writer, Dr Terri Power, notes that the piece was a personal and political snapshot of what LGBTQ Americans felt at the time, where rights were not recognised. But in many ways the themes of loneliness and isolation are still relevant. And perhaps there aren't enough pieces that explore transgender themes.

The performance also includes a Q&A session with the creative team afterwards.  It concludes its brief run at The Riverside Studios on Sunday.

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Photo credits: Jamie Scott-Smith


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