"I used to think that whenever I thought of you I was all lit up, like a candle. I was afraid people would notice." Read more …
It’s 1887 and Nancy Astley sits in the audience at her local music hall: she doesn’t know it yet, but the next act on the bill will change her life. Tonight she will fall in love… with the thrill of the stage and with Kitty Butler; a girl who wears trousers. Giddy with desire and hungry for experience, Nancy follows Kitty to London where unimaginable adventures await.
Performed by a fine ensemble, this adaptation of the picaresque novel is a good night out and a rousing tribute to feminist principles.
Wade's script is a fleet and skilful distillation of dialogue and narrative chronology. If anything, it's far too faithful to the original, not wild enough in content or structure. And Turner's staging is hidebound by its repetitive music hall format.
Laura Wade's stage adaptation of the Sarah Waters novel is worth the admission price for certain sequences alone.
Laura Wade’s adaptation of Sarah Waters’s best-selling lesbian love story lacks ardour in both its politics and songs.
The cast, jumping between roles, are uniformly excellent. However, the production never achieves more than a frisson of queerness.
It’s fun. It’s definitely a good night out. But its also maddening in its inability to address the emotional seriousness, the utopian world-building, the things that make the novel loved as well as laughed at.
As it is, there is a great deal to enjoy as well as some parts that are comparatively infuriating.
With a Palm Court style band accompanying the action, it is this embracing of theatricality that makes what follows so exquisite.
It’s a story that walks a tightrope between cheerfully knowing titillation on one hand, and gay and feminist agitprop on the other; but in Laura Wade’s adaptation, it keeps its balance beautifully throughout.
A production that is both raucous and bawdy at times, but that fatally prioritises high camp over emotional depth.
Another great birthday salute to the Lyceum!
Ironically however, given how keen it is to play on its music hall setting, Tipping The Velvet is a production which might have benefited from a little more variety.
Beautiful touches, such as the addition of contemporary songs to the score by Michael Bruce – the inclusion of Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy makes one scene in particular completely unforgettable – these modern references, coupled with breathtaking aerobatics elevate Tipping the Velvet to extreme and completely unique heights. Don’t miss it.
Impressively original and constantly compelling, Turner’s production continues the Lyceum’s remarkable run of hit shows.
Sarah Waters' Tipping the Velvet adapted for the theatre: Laura Wade puts lesbian sex on stage
Tipping the Velvet's Laura Wade on handling play's sex scenes
Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh from Wednesday October 28, 2015, until Saturday November 14, 2015. More info: www.lyceum.org.uk
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