Stephen Fry to host musical gay wedding
COMEDIAN and gay rights activist Stephen Fry will host one of the UK’s first gay weddings later this month, which will be aired on British TV as an all-singing, all-dancing musical.
Fry will provide the commentary for Our Gay Wedding: The Musical featuring the nuptials of Benjamin Till and Nathan Taylor.
Same-sex marriage ceremonies become legal in England and Wales on March 29. Scotland intends to follow suit later in the year.
Taylor is a musical theatre performer and has appeared in cult classics The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Till is a multi-award winning composer and has worked on several televised musicals including one inspired by a major UK highway.
The grooms said the wedding was their most ambitious work to date: “Doing what we both do for a living has meant that we’ve spent our entire lives expressing emotion through song, so getting married in a musical, particularly one that we’re writing ourselves, felt like the most natural thing in the world.”
Till and Taylor promised a televisual spectacular with sung vows, sung readings and ensemble pieces featuring the whole congregation. While the service, to be broadcast by Channel Four, will celebrate the couple’s relationship, it will also pay tribute to gay and lesbian people living in countries where homosexuality remains a crime.
Fry, an established gay activist, recently called for Britain to withdraw from the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics following attacks on young LGBTI people in Russia.
Meanwhile, the Queen has sent what is believed to be her first message of support to an LGBTI organisation.
In a statement to mark 40 years of the London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard, the 87- year-old monarch said: “Best wishes and congratulations to all concerned on this most special anniversary.”
While neither the words ‘gay’ nor ‘lesbian’ passed the Queen’s lips, it is nevertheless being interpreted as a watershed moment, with acceptance of the UK community now from the highest levels of society.
