“The Adhesion of Love” tour is a huge success!
“The Adhesion of Love” is a play by Stephen M Hornby commissioned by OUTing the Past as our 2019 heritage premiere. It is the first full-length heritage premiere and was made possible with grants from the Arts Council of England and Manchester Pride’s Superbia.
PIC: The members of the Eagle Street College (Credit: Bolton Museum)
The play is based on the extraordinary true story of how an architect’s assistant from Bolton crossed the Atlantic in 1891 to meet visionary queer American poet, Walt Whitman. It was written with extensive research by Hornby using archive materials that relate to the Bolton Whitmanites in both Bolton Library and the John Rylands Library in Manchester.
The play was toured across the North West of England as part of LGBT History Month and for the celebrations of Whitman’s 200th birthday, providing a challenging queer reading of the past.
Picture: The Cast of The Adhesion of Love (photo credit: Lee Baxter)
This tour of “The Adhesion of Love” generated local, regional and national press interest, with over 15,000 people engaging with articles about the play on-line. There were full preview articles in the following publications:
Gay Times (two page feature piece, print)
Attitude (on-line)
Bolton News (print and on-line)
Burnley Express (print and on-line)
Gay Star News (on-line)
Big Issue North (print)
Queerist (on-line)
The play toured to Bolton, Salford, Burnley, Manchester and Wigan. The final performance in the Bolton Socialist Club was on the 200th birthday of Walt Whitman. The club itself was visited by the men featured in the play and was a brilliant place to end the tour with a sell-out performance.
Picture: Christy Matthews as Dalmas, Macaulay Cooper as Warry, Conor Ledger as Wallace (Credit: Lee Baxter)
The tour attracted the largest audience for any heritage premiere with nearly 500 people attending. The audience response was impressive. 201 anonymous after show questionnaires were completed in total. 119 (59.2%) gave the show five stars. 71 (35.3%) gave the show four stars. So, overall an amazing 94.5% rated the show as either excellent or very good.
This was reflected in the quality, depth and length of the after-show discussions chaired by Paul Fairweather. People testified to the impact of the show in terms of re-thinking not just a specific piece of history but also about the process of how history is made and recorded, especially in relation to LGBT+ people.
The critical responses spoke of the high artistic quality of the production:
· “Nothing short of a triumph.” – Burnley Express
· “The actors are all excellent. Go.” – Canal St
· “The play is a thoroughly researched mediation on loss, love, and literature.” –Reviewer No 9
· “A great evening’s entertainment.” – Greater Manchester Reviewer
· “This really does feel like a step back into another era.” – Live Art Live
· “It’s a truly fascinating story.” – Circles & Stalls
Picture: Warry and Walt Whitman
Picture: Conor Ledger as Wallace and Billie Meredith as Whitman (Credit: Lee Baxter)