Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Coventry is a foreign country, they did things differently there; especially in the 1970s and to a young boy who knew he was a fabulous woman in waiting.

As part of this year’s Homotopia at the Unity Theatre, Kate O’ Donnell took the full house through what it was like to grow up as transgender in the Midlands city in the 1970s and 80s, the derision supplied the all-male establishments and the intolerance shown by her father and the ever increasing phrase ushered from his lips of Big Girl’s Blouse.

This though was no looking back at a time with horror or anger, this was a night when fabulous reigned, when marvellous was allowed to be flourished and all with the glamour of a woman assured in her life and the response, the two well manicured fingers up to the past, this was a night when to all those who made their way to the Unity Theatre, straight, gay or transgender revelled in the dialogue of a woman comfortable in her own skin, who was happy and brave enough to make a show about her and even produce photographs of the young lad from Coventry whose chin grew out as he teenage years and to whom getting his theatrical badge at cubs was just a stepping stone to being the woman she came out to be.

Whilst there are those who will still make trouble, who get kicks from causing unnecessary harm and distress to the transgender community, the world has moved on from 1970s Coventry and Britain in general, acceptance is a truth worth pursuing, not just in the L.G.B. community but in every spectrum of transgender, every fabulous word spoken with ease.

For Kate O’ Donnell, the journey is only part of the story, it was one fraught by an uncaring society and to which nature has supplied them with will get the true support needed to make their own journey’s more complete.

An evening of open honesty family life and as she made it clear at the end of her long and wonderfully put together monologue, she got off lightly and with much help, children who grow up with gender dysphoria, who know that they are the opposite gender showered in glitz and sequins, one of Homotopia’s great nights out.

Ian D. Hall