Queer history is made up of bad news. The official documents record the raids, the arrests, the executions. The rest – all the raging love and snatches of joy – is largely left for us to imagine. In Jordan Luke Gage’s impressive Redcliffe, the writer-performer fills in the gaps of the lives of William Critchard and Richard Arnold, two men who collided in mid-18th-century Bristol. Inspired by true events romanticised into a musical, this open-hearted production gives them the kind of grand love story that history rarely wrote down.
Gage plays William, a shy local boy whose chemistry crackles with arrogant sailor Richard (Daniel Krikler), docked and staying in the area of Redcliffe for a few days. While there’s a little too much 21st-century mentality to their meet-cute, it’s hard not to fall for their charm and dogged optimism as the pair attempt to carve out a tiny patch of freedom in a world that shuns them for their desires.
