Latesumma in Melbourne

Melbourne’s annual gay and lesbian Midsumma festival draws to a close this weekend with a number of key events still on offer before this Sunday’s finale.

Organisers have already hailed this year’s Midsumma as being one of the biggest on record, with most festival events attracting capacity or near-capacity crowds.

One of the top performers this year was David Knox’s pop musical I Should Be So Lucky, which proved popular after attracting significant media interest in Melbourne.

That event sold out before the opening night and additional performances had to be put on to cater for the extra crowds and all of those shows sold out as well, Brenton Geyer, projects manager at Midsumma, told Sydney Star Observer.

William Yang’s Friends Of Dorothy has also been massively popular and ticket sales have already reached capacity on all three nights that it’s showing.

According to Geyer, the opening night Street Party and Creature Comforts tour of Melbourne Zoo also proved to be crowd favourites.

The annual Red Raw party took place last Saturday, drawing solid crowds at the new, smaller venue of the Goods Shed.

Red Raw was a phenomenal success. We had a very good feeling from the community before the party and on the night and it was a near sell-out, so we’re very happy with the way things went, Adam Pickvance, president of the ALSO Foundation, told the Star.

In all, over 3,500 people attended Red Raw. We reduced the size of the venue, which meant we had a capacity crowd and people really enjoyed the atmosphere.

Yang’s sold-out Friends Of Dorothy is one of the closing weekend events, beginning tonight and closing on Saturday.

Also taking place tonight is the Mass Debate which this year argues the topic Playing Hard: Is Playing Fair Playing It Safe?, a topic aimed at addressing a variety of issues pertaining to gay men and lesbians in sport, including whether lesbians and straight men are better at sport than gay men.

The Midsumma pool party, which sold out last year, will take place on Saturday.

We’re looking forward to the pool party because it’s going to be a 35-degree day on Saturday, so we’ll have a capacity crowd that will be taking part in things like dive-bombing competitions, said Geyer.

Midsumma draws to a close on Sunday with the Midsumma Carnival in Alexander Gardens. The carnival will be followed by Midsumma’s T Dance, which features sets by local DJs Jude Tsai, Guy Uppiah, kdj and John Portelli.