Queer Theatre Date Nights
I come to you with more reviews from date nights involving queer theatre (see previous queer theatre reviews here)! As a proud lesbian I find going to these shows with my partner has been a fun way of us learning more about queer and sapphic history together, as well as sparking interesting and poignant conversations between the two of us. The shows we went to recently were Sappho: The Poetess and Gwenda’s Garage. (Please note: there are some minor spoilers ahead!)
Sappho: The Poetess, The Other Palace Theatre 29.10.25
This is the story of Sappho reimagined as a (modern) singer/songwriter turning her poetry into songs and playing gigs around Lesbos. Of course, we don’t have much of her actual poetry, so the lyrics of these songs were created for the show. The play opens on Sappho standing on a cliff edge – a scene we return to later. The staging was minimal, and, besides instruments, there were no props.
In general, there is very little we know about Sappho, and I personally know even less. I was going in blind when it came to the facts of Sappho’s life and career, but I enjoyed it as a storyteller.
The play allowed Sappho to tell her own story as she narrated everything from her point of view. There were three other actors/musicians on stage (and the musical director), but none of them had lines; Sappho recounted what they said while the actors silently set the scene - Joanna Hickman playing Sappho’s mother was particularly good at this.
We see Sappho’s young adult life – her family dynamics, her falling for a woman, and then her being married off to a man – and then we get a glimpse at the history of her lyrics centuries after the original events, including her poetry being burnt and (metaphorically) buried, before later inspiring the terms ‘sapphic’ and ‘lesbian’ in modern culture. In order to get this history in the context of the performance, Sappho narrates this from the afterlife, which didn’t quite work for me – I think it may have been more effective as an epilogue.
At 1 hour 15 minutes, it was a wonderful length and made for a good night out.
Gwenda’s Garage, Southwark Playhouse (Borough) 11.11.25
Gwenda’s Garage was a real lesbian-run garage in the 80s, and the musical is based on this true story. It’s set entirely in the garage itself conveying how this really was a hub of for these lesbians in Sheffield (which I loved!). Advertised as a good time and with the opening song reassuring us “there’s a happy ending”, this was a tale I was excited to get invested in.
The lesbians running Gwenda’s Garage are politically minded and the performance takes us through multiple years and many political and historical events, the one most highlighted being the introduction of Section 28 in 1988. Each of the characters have their own fights that we explore over the course of the show – we see into the struggles of a women business owner, a lesbian mother, a Black feminist and activist, a wife making friends with lesbians for the first time, and a young mechanic apprentice.
I personally found all these storylines a little muddled in the context of the show; it felt like the play had maybe taken on too much. But simplifying it, or taking any of these elements away, wouldn’t have done justice to the story either, and so I would have loved for us to have seen stronger character development (at the start of the play?) to strengthen the storytelling overall – maybe each character has their song, or steps forward to introduce themselves, either to the audience directly or in cleverly-worked dialogue.
The music was all upbeat and fun – I’ve had some of these tracks stuck in my head in the two weeks since seeing the show – but I thought could also use some tweaking to make the musical numbers more cohesive with one another.
As promised, there is a happy ending shown on stage, and, of course, Section 28 and the laws influencing the character’s lives, have since been abolished. At the time of writing, this show still has a few more days at the Southwark Playhouse (Borough). In its current form, it is a fun night out, but I would be keen to see if this play gets workshopped and then has further productions in the future.