2:01pm Thursday 24th June 2010
A REAL dramatic treat is on offer at Malvern this week, with a piece of work that pulls off the near-impossible task of simultaneously enlightening and entertaining its audience.
Canary by Jonathan Harvey is the culmination of the author’s ambition to write an epic piece spanning 50 years of the gay experience in this country, and it does it brilliantly, through the story of police chief Tom, whose past explodes in a blinding flash of paparazzi cameras and he is forced to confront the damage he’s done to his family and to himself.
Ingeniously skipping from past to present, with, in most cases, two actors playing older and younger incarnations of the characters, and embracing Mary Whitehouse’s Festival of Light, gloriously subverted from the auditorium, the miners’ strike, and the horror of the aversion therapy used as a ‘cure’ for homosexuality in the 1960s. Shocking and moving by turns, Canary is a piece of theatre that makes a big impression, recalling the panic and prejudice of the 80s as AIDS took hold, but also reminding us that complacency is not an adequate substitute for those extreme reactions. “The issues,” says Harvey “are still relevant, so I’d like people to be concerned as well as having a good night out.” Which is exactly the response Canary evokes.
Canary runs at Malvern Theatres until Saturday, June 26. To book, call the box office on 01684 892277
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