Review 2017: Love Trumps Everything / How We Glow

Love Trumps Everything *** How We Glow *****

(Review published in theoutmost.com.  Check out more Festival reviews at theoutmost.com here)

The appearance of Trump in the title Love Trumps Everything, has nothing to do with the orange man in the Whitehouse. Instead, it’s the thread that loosely binds three short plays where love overcomes life’s unavoidable obstacles. The first layer in this sandwich is Carolyn Gage’s ‘Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter’, an intriguing story, brilliantly delivered by Maria Blaney and well directed by Philippa Alford. If it wasn’t altogether clear to me how this piece fitted into an LGBT festival, that’s no matter.

The sandwich filling is light. Kathleen Warnock gives us a personal insight into her journey to equal marriage with ‘How To Get Married in Five Steps and 17 Years’. And then, we are topped with Candice Perry’s ‘Made in Heaven’. This is a very amusing tale which suggests that in heaven, the big G will make sure we spend eternity with the right partner, even if it’s not who think it is!

Love Trumps Everything – ‘Made in Heaven’

A welcome accompaniment to these pieces is How We Glow, a cleverly crafted verbatim script woven from interviews with LGBT youth in New York. It is wonderfully performed by a bunch of bright, beautiful actors and certainly left me with reassurance that the kids really are alright.

Much credit to Jamila Humphrie and Emily Schorr Lesnick for this refreshing and important social document.

 

Brian Higgins

‘Love Trumps Everything’ and ‘How We Glow’ continue at the Teacher’s Club until May 13 at 7.30pm, with a matinee on Saturday at 2.30pm, tickets here

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