The Green Fairy is a new musical playing at the Union Theatre. It follows Jo and along the course of the show we discover all about Jo, her past and all those issues she’s faced which now have affected her relationship with her daughter. The show uses ‘The Green Fairy’ as a conscious for Jo, although the show has no relation to or doesn’t feature absinthe in any way this is an interesting way for us to follow Jo’s story.
This piece has a lot of themes; child abandonment, alcoholism, friendship, homosexuality and marriage to name a few. My struggle with the show was that I didn’t really understand which one of these were most important, they were just all thrown in there to add drama but to me the focus wasn’t clear enough.
Sold on the poster as a ‘Queer Pub Musical’, this isn’t correct. Yes, the piece does feature a lesbian relationship however this is not the centre of the show. And actually, credit to the writer for this, this never comes up as an issue or problem in the story. It is merely falling in love with someone else, rather than realising that the character is gay. But having seen the show, this is not the marketing route to go down as it sets an expectation that it will not fulfil, not in any bad way at all, just in the way that this is not what this show is about.
