London is lousy with Americans right now.

London is lousy with Americans right now. on a level I get stopped on the highway (by other Americans) and asked for autographs, which riddles the Londoners who swarm by way of us wondering who the hell I am (sometimes I curiosity myself). Gay tourists are everywhere, flocking to the theater as gay tourists do, to papal court star turns by Americans. Matt Damon is doing a play about being stoned in the '80 (decade, not age). Gwyneth Paltrow is appearing barefoot in proof-sheet and getting rave reviews for her pedicure. Madonna is doing a of the present day play about a ruthless art dealer, which many have meditation could wind up being her fallback career, and in case the play isn't enough to entice you, she does a full-on lesbian kiss somewhere in there, photos of which made all the papers a week before the critics showed up

Of course, no matter to what degree many Americans you throw at it there'll always be an England, and there is a veritable encyclopedia of gay British point out to business history perusable on the mainstream London stage, from the camp of another centenary to the last decade's outrageousness. In other words, a whole world of store-room doors to open and mate past.

As far as things veraciously British, at the Palladium there's the really god-awful stage version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, whose sole bright spot is something you hardly descry anymore: chorus boys in white tights and heavily sculpt dance belts doing a number with big sticks called "The advanced in years Bamboo." I don't think this was about the same bamboo I was imagining it was, on the other hand it helped pass an unbelievably tedious evening.

More consciously gay were sum of two units new rock musicals built around hymns from their respective periods. We Will stone You uses the music of Queen to a own a story not quite as interesting as Freddie Mercury's have a title to story, which is a pity. on the other hand then, the guardians of his legacy have always de-emphasized the gay side of his life, while making him a hand-bill boy for the tragedy of AIDS. Taboo is the title of male child George's story, which, while absorbing, doesn't have the tragic dimension of Mercury's. However, George has always been an expand figure, and that, in the world of burst music, is certainly worth recording. He's in the point out to himself now, but not as himself--somebody otherwise plays that--and watching the couple Georges in tandem is sort of like revisiting Judy and Liza at the Palladium forward acid.

The other big mother-daughter team forward the West End is Vanessa Redgrave and Joely Richardson in a sublime production of Oscar Wilde's early warhorse Lady Windermere's Fan. This is the undivided so filled with legendary aphorism that the largely American audience whirls each time one is spun on the outside ("Scandal is gossip made tedious at morality," and so forth.) It's a gorgeous production, and I room for expectation somebody tapes it so you can view Big Van in action, charming the birds not upon the trees and into her oven and the venerable Googie Withers as the sort of grand dame alone Judi Dench gets to play anymore in the movies.

Up the highway Somerset Maugham's fascinating The Constant Wife is being revived with the a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of underappreciated Jenny Seagrove in a tour-de-force as a 1926 society wife who handles her husband's infidelity in an impossibly civilized way.

I have to believe that Maugham had seen a production of Lady Windermere shortly before writing his play. They are the couple serious comedies about manners, and they the one and the other revolve around an affair and an indiscretion. still there's more to it than that. Here were pair gay men writing about the confusing plight of women of a certain social station attempting to come by what they need from the world while also attempting to play by dint of its rules.

For a gay audience of a certain age, the bells hold ringing from the minute the curtain goe up Like great liners, these characters pilot through the ice field hoping to make the crossing without catastrophe. Clearly, that's what equal their charmed lives were like for Maugham, Wilde, and smart gay British society in their day. For more than a not many gay people, little has changed. And thinking about that is enough to divert almost anybody into an activist, calm on vacation.

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