With Love, Mr Gay: The award winning play making its way to Bury

National World - LocalTV

We sat down with the team behind the award-winning and critically acclaimed show ‘With Love, Mr Gay’ to get the low down on the story ahead of the last performances of the show in Bury and Camden.

Transcript

00:00Hello and welcome to Manchester World. My name is Theo Houstonbets. Today we have a little bit of a

00:03creative treat for you. Now everyone knows how important the creative industries are to the

00:07city of Manchester. You only have to look at bands such as Oasis to figure that out. And today we're

00:13going to be going along and watching the rehearsal of the show that won the 2024 Manchester Fringe

00:17Best New Writing Award. We're going to be talking to the creator Josh who you may have seen before

00:21because he runs free guided tours in Manchester. Hello I'm George Burry. I'm an actor in the piece

00:26and I play the B&M Bargains Buddha. I'm Joshua Valmartin. I'm the writer and also co-performer.

00:32I'm Jez Dolan. I'm a visual artist and I'm the director. So the play We Love Mr Gay is based on

00:39a true story. When I was living in South Manchester and I made the mistake of moving a neighbour's bin

00:44because then on the wall in the flats I was living in there was a note and it said to Mr Gay

00:51if you move my bin again I will get an ex-mercenary to destroy you. From flat two. So the show's sort of

01:02about neighbourhood conflicts. Can you ever resolve a conflict? But if that sounds a bit heavy

01:07there's songs, there's cabaret, there's comedy, there's interviews. Josh and I have worked together

01:13for quite a long time really. So we kind of know how each other works and how each other operates and I

01:21think we feel really comfortable in just how our working relationship is. It's been a really fun

01:27creative process. Writer, visual artist and actor. We all bring something slightly different in the

01:33creative process of that and I've got Josh Dawson as well on the keys. Brilliant. David's basically been

01:39stage manager for this as well. There's just a lot of creative people that really this show means a

01:45lot to and yes honestly I've learned a lot and it's been a pleasure to be a part of it. I'm going to say

01:50one of the starting cues for the whole thing is feels like pontins. So that kind of holiday camp,

01:56kind of slightly naff entertainment single and go all right we're having a great time, that kind of stuff.

02:02So it's you know you've got on one hand you've got Buddha as this kind of you know

02:07religious figure all that be it from B&M and then pontins. One important thing to mention

02:14especially this is going out before tomorrow. Bury is the gayest borough in Greater Manchester

02:20and it's owing to this LGBT forum they have. They're incredible. These guys just make stuff happen.

02:27Like not just Bury Pride but tomorrow there's the Queerfest but they've got so much going on

02:33and it's because it's the people make it happen. Like they just have such like amazing initiative

02:39and so it's fantastic that the play is part of Queerfest. With Love Mr Gay is on at the Met in

02:45Bury as part of Queerfest the headline event. 21st of June tomorrow at 7 30 pm and again if you miss it

02:53come to the Camden People's Theatre part of the Camden Fringe August 10th and 11th. That's at 9 pm. See you there.

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