Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The English language is as rich as anything on Earth and yet it is made so purely because it is allowed to breathe, to expand, to contract and usurp words from other cultures and to bring the art of communication into a realm that no other language can truly compete with. The ability to take one word and give it a completely different sense of occasion, to allow the sense of freedom to define the lingo, the dialect and the pattern of speech is to be celebrated and not given a stern look, not to be rallied against and see the language die in a stunted cul-de-sac.

Such is the world of Polari, a language within a language, the secret tongue and offspring of a thousand mothers and fathers and more noticeably from the gay community who used it with great effect when to be gay was absurdly a crime, when to have feelings for someone was to be ridiculed and the threat of imprisonment was a distinct possibility. Polari allowed feeling and thoughts to be conveyed without the fear of being beaten or worse.

As part of this year’s Homotopia, Polari is celebrated, the words of poets and writers joined forces at the festival’s natural home of the Unity Theatre and gave the audience the type of evening in which much is learned, where education is to be admired and the value of self-expression lauded.

With the evening split into two halves, the words almost became ravenous in their detail, the interest in the representation flowed easily and in the case of Gerry Potter and the great Diana Souhami bounded with the enthusiasm of a lifetime.

Alongside Dr. Ellen Storm, Andrew McMillan, the impressive V.G. Lee and new comer to the scene of prose and poetry Catherine Warner, Polari was not just heard but its presence felt, its lingering effect on the world of words, the trip into the narrative a joy to behold and in Gerry Potter’s exuberance as he held the audience with the grace of performance poetry, this was a night in which Homotopia excelled.

An evening in which words were exchanged, not in anger or brutality but in the hope that anyone could learn from the thought that to love is not act of secrecy but one that should be declared often and with whatever words come to hand.

Ian D. Hall