While Jonathan Harvey's latest play, Canary, recently premiered, the play that made his name, 1993's Beautiful Thing, has returned in what is apparently its first UK touring production. The thing with touring productions is you never know just what kind of quality you're letting yourself in for, but fortunately Giuliano Crispini's production for ( Read more... )

The title of Jonathan Harvey's new play comes from a Peter Tatchell quote, about how gay people are the canaries in the mine - the way they're treated tells you about a society's attitude to human rights. And so this is a play that follows three connected stories in the sixties, eighties and noughties. Canary also reunites Harvey with Beautiful ( Read more... )

With less theatre trips over the Christmas and New Year period I decided to read one of the books of playscripts I've been meaning to catch up on, and with Beautiful People's second series having just finished I went for the first volume of Jonathan Harvey's collected plays, consisting of Beautiful Thing, Babies, Boom Bang-a-Bang and Rupert Street ( Read more... )

I've been commenting about it on Twitter and elsewhere as it's gone out, but now that the second (and probably final) series of Beautiful People has ended, maybe it's time for a quick roundup: ( Spoilers. And That. )

Apparently Beautiful People didn't get great ratings so the last episode of the season on Thursday may be the last one ever - that'd be a real shame 'cause Jonathan Harvey's loose (very loose) adaptation of Simon Doonan's memoirs has been one of the funniest (and gayest) things on TV this year. There's a DVD out now so if you didn't see it off you ( Read more... )