PAUL TAYLOR MILLS PRESENTS
A QUEER SEASON IN THE WEST END
BLOODY ELLE
AND
BOY OUT THE CITY
RUNNING AT THE LYRIC THEATRE
FROM 27 – 30 SEPTEMBER 2023
For a limited season, this September, the Lyric Theatre will host two new pieces of work, which have received rave reviews from this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
First seen in 2021 at The Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, Bloody Elle, is a critically acclaimed show which is loud, proud and unapologetically queer. It’s a story from then, for now which was since played at Soho Theatre and was nominated for ‘Best Regional Production’ at the WhatsOnStage Awards 2022.
Boy Out The City premiered in 2021 at Westival Music and Arts Festival followed by a London premiere at the Turbine Theatre. For the past 2 years, audiences up and down the UK have been praising this hilarious, revealing and deeply tender play.
BLOODY ELLE
Bloody Elle is a one-woman, semi-autobiographical gig musical, from Lauryn Redding. Featuring original music created live on stage, it’s a funny, poetic, and epic exploration of love, class, shame, and beauty in all its complexities. It’s the coming of age and coming out story of Elle; a young, working-class girl from the north of England.
Elle meets Eve. Her eyes are green like guacamole, she has posh-hair and a freckle on her chin and when she touches Elle’s arm…the world spins off its axis. This loud, proud love story is heart-warmingly honest and belly-achingly funny.
Stuffed full of those stomach-flipping-time-stopping moments that everyone will recognise. Bloody Elle is a gig musical full of searing original music performed live on stage.
It’s brutal. It’s beautiful. It’s a “moment moment.”
Bloody Elle is produced with Traverse Theatre, Cloudrise Productions and Royal Exchange Theatre.
BOY OUT THE CITY
Created out of writing from his own private journals, Declan Bennett (recently returned from Broadway in Moulin Rouge), reflects onsurviving the streets of Coventry in a NAF NAF jacket, discovering the Gay scene in 90’s Soho, and confronting his Catholic school days.
After moving out of London to wait out the final months of the pandemic initially with his boyfriend, Declan unexpectedly finds himself alone in the Oxfordshire countryside. In his isolation, he is forced to face the demons of his past on a messy journey through the turbulent world of toxic masculinity, homophobia, and men’s mental health. From the lonely aisles of Hobbycraft to the bright lights of New York City, this is the story of a man in desperate search of identity when confronted with sudden unexpected solitude.
A raw and humorous autobiographical play exploring
toxic masculinity, homophobia, and mental health
Boy Out The City is produced by Lauren Reed Productions.