The Edge in Chorlton is another venue ticked off my list and, with the presentation of an LGBTQ+ production of ‘stand-up’ comedy with a difference, I was more than happy to accept the offer to review ‘Let Me Look At You.’
Leading man and solo performer Mark Pinkosh hails from Hawaii. He and Godfrey Hamilton from Essex came together to form what is now “one of the most exciting theatrical partnerships around today” - award-winning (Double Fringe First winners and both The Stage and Manchester Evening News Best Actor Award) Starving Artists Productions.
If the piece is autobiographical, he recognised his feelings of difference and attraction to the same sex at the tender age of 8, whether it was the night at the theatre where he witnessed the guy in platform shoes, purple flairs and a flowery shirt or the declaration by best friend Tony that they would one day marry one another. With reference to family members throughout, there is a prominent alternative plot to that of his journey - the insight of the struggle(s) face by LGBT people who have and must still stand together. His mother declares “It’s not the homosexuals but the gays I can’t stand” and his father calls him “[His] little faggot” in the hope that he will “stay angry”.
A gay man wanders through Soho, thinking over the losses and triumphs of the past 50 years of gay experience - The AIDS, marching, chem sex, dating and the introduction of civil partnerships and equal marriage in both the UK and (some of) the states of his home nation. There, right across the street, he spots a young motorcyclist parking his bike…and is impelled to cross the road and introduce himself. The highly-educational and emotive aspects of the show are intertwined with his experience and what he hopes to tell the ‘biker’. When he does, in the final lines, he is told to ‘just breathe’.
This inspiring and inspired, passionate creation is the newest performance piece by Starving Artists. Hilarious and touching it delivers stand-up and solo theatre in this personal story from the gay ‘movement’. “Grounded in history and battered by camp, a fifty-something gay man shares his misadventures while quietly having a nervous breakdown himself.” On the fiftieth anniversary of the UK’s Sexual Offenses Act, we are confronted with the statement that “things haven’t changed all that much.”
Pinkosh is an incredibly talented performer and has clearly lived a life. He is passionate and emotional in equal measure, in all the right places and portrays the voice of the LGBT community extremely well in this powerful impactful piece. We learn a hell of a lot, including where and when the real movement began, in a lesbian bar in San Francisco, backed by normal folk and leading the way for so much progress in the ongoing fight for equality and acceptance.
Reviewer - John Kristof
on - 5/10/18
Great post.
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