The whole Queerguru London Team are a very excitable bunch at the best of times. Jonny Ward one of our Contributing editors could hardly contain himself when he called to tell us that not only is the first Theatre there reopening, but they are doing so with a new socially distanced version of the acclaimed musical ‘Fanny and Stella’ by Glenn Chandler and Charles Miller,
It’s all based one of those queer Brit stories that so bizarre you know that it is true. Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park were two young men who, in 1871, were put on trial in London for dressing as women and conspiracy to commit sodomy, a felony at the time.
They dressed up as women (and were very good at it) for amateur theatricals, but when the show was over, and sometimes when there wasn’t even any show, as ‘Fanny and Stella’ they would frequent places of entertainment in the West End where men encountered men for sex and male prostitutes plied their trade.
Park and Boulton were acquitted – an amazing victory for the time when sexual acts between men carried a sentence of two years – primarily because conspiracy could not be proved. Or perhaps it was because one had a father who was a judge, and the other a mother who swayed the court with her tears.
Upon their acquittal, Park and Boulton – as Fanny and Stella – along with their theatre company, take their story on the road. They hire a venue for “one night only” to tell their amazing true story of their lives, their trial, and their sensational acquittal. But are they in an ungiving age putting themselves on trial a second time?
Frank and Stella is to be staged as the premiere production at The Garden Theatre in the newly refurbished beer garden of The Eagle, 349 Kennington Lane, Vauxhall, London, SE11 5QY from Monday 3 – 25 August
It will star Jed Berry as Ernest Boulton/Stella and Kane Verrall as Frederick William Park/Fanny and directed by Steven Dexter, with musical staging by Nick Winston. It is produced by Peter Bull for LAMBCO Productions who told us “We are taking baby steps as we venture into the brave new world of open-air socially distanced performances. We are only performing three shows a week initially but we aim to increase this after a successful launch.”
Queerguru’s Jonny Ward will be there, appropriately masked, to review the production : watch this space.
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