The Patrick Centre

As it’s own space. I wanted to add the The Patrick Centre for the performing arts to Unilocal.Accessed through the upper floor in Birmingham Hippodrome’s main foyer, this is a 200-​seater auditorium more intimate experience than the huge show space of the Hippodromes main theatre.
Jord M and I won tickets to see Beautiful Thing at The Patrick Centre thanks to Vicky O (Our Birmingham Community Manager and thanks to the team at Birmingham Hippodrome for the Tickets!) We were here on press night! Which meant a free programme and drinks in the VIP Lloyd room before the show and during the interval.
Within five minutes of our arrival, I saw actress Charlie Brooks by the stage door, and resisted having a photograph rather than crashing her conversation. My night was already made!
If you don’t know Beautiful Thing, is a 1993 play by Jonathan Harvey, about two teenage boys finding love on a south London council estate. Although current for the time it was made, it is really now a play set in the 1990s with lots of nods to the culture of the day. 1990s copies of The Guardian, Hello! magazine, reading the problem page in gay magazines and finding gay venues in classified directory all add to the authenticity of the time.
Charlie Brooks who plays Janine Butcher in EastEnders is BRILLIANT as Sandra, a single, hard-​working mother with a string of ex boyfriends. She is funny, warm and much more loveable than the hard faced character she plays in the soap. I was really excited to see her in this role made famous in the film by Linda Henry who is Shirley Carter in EastEnders.
Her son Jamie is played by the great Sam Jackson from Skins, and he really is believable as Sandra’s child who is starting to want to explore his own sexuality.
Acting-​wise there is lots of crossover with BBC EastEnders.
Their neighbour’s son Ste is played by excellent Thomas Law who played Peter Beale version 4 in EastEnders. His awkward sexual awakening, and the homophobic violence from his family, remind you that this was first performed a year after being homosexual was declassified as a mental illness in the UK (in 1992.)
Sandra’s hippyish boyfriend, Tony, is played smoothly by Gerard McCarthy who played Kris Fisher in Hollyoaks. Tony is «right on» about too understanding about everything and you feel like he is a bit of a yes man.
And finally the cast is rounded out by the talented Vanessa Babirye, as the other neighbour Leah. Leah’s obsession with the music of Mama Cass provides the even more retro soundtrack to the play.
While this is really Jamie and Ste’s love story for me the performance of Charlie Brooks stole the show. If you get chance to see it around the country then GO SEE IT!