A Life in Three Acts

Synopsis

With honesty, humour and occasional anger, performer Bette Bourne tells the playwright Mark Ravenhill about his life. A London story, it moves from a post-war childhood, to the Gay Liberation Front, life in a drag commune, the creation of the ground breaking Bloolips company and beyond. The piece reveals a portrait of an amazing individual and a celebration of the momentous struggles of gay liberation.

Latest User Review

rds - 11 February 2010:

Like his predecessor, Quentin Crisp, Bette Bourne is one of life's great characters. From the script I see this show was first performed on 18th August 2009 in Edinburgh and subsequently in Holland and then at the Soho Theatre in late September. Now back at the Soho I felt, however, I was watching an early tryout instead. Bette may have a poor memory now and therefore needs to read a script, but surely not so ponderously as he did last night? This was HIS life he was reading after all. It would seem he has been corseted by Mark Ravehill's script and it was only in the moments when Bette appeared to stop reading from it that it come alive. If Bette's memory is in better shape he should ditch the scrip, cut Mark out, make a list of bullet points and just be his own magnificent self and perhaps, as a friend suggested, have a pianist too. And why was Mark looking like he'd just got up and was wearing what ever he'd found lying around on the bedroom floor? I see, from the photo on the front of the script, he's wearing exactly the same scruffy clothes, is he trying to make a statement and if so what can it possibly be apart from I can't be arsed? To make such a glaring sartorial gaff with the magnificent Bette looking so stylish next to him on the same platform is unforgivable! Bette is a wonderful old queen who has much to tell us, but not like this. There were the occasional moments when one glimpsed something of the iconoclast behind the drag, but then, sadly, to have it disappear again in the ponderous reading of the script. Never the less, Like Quentin before him, Bette has transmogrified into one of the stately homos of England. He probably deserves a DBE for services to the Gay and Lesbian community! Five stars if Bette could only be released from this tortuous script, but for last nights clunky effort two stars. ...

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