Love Song to Lavender Menace – Summerhall

Nostalgia for those of us who were there, a lesson for those who come since, this delightful piece of Scottish LGBT+ history relives the Lavender Menace bookshop in Edinburgh.

Bookseller Lewis and party-boy Glen celebrate Scotland's radical, lesbian, gay and feminist bookshop that began in the cloakroom of a Princes Street gay club and became the centre of Edinburgh's LGBT+ community. Matthew McVarish and Pierce Reid are triumphant in their many roles of this gentle love story. Never indulgent but frequently camp, they relive the story of the bookshop and their friendship through presenting an “homage” to the founders.

As the booklights bring the set to life, we are whirled back to the good old, bad old seventies/eighties with much of the music and suitable appreciation of capitalism and Margaret Thatcher.

It may be a pink tinged view of the past, but I challenge you not to have a tear in your eye at the end.

Derek Benfield