Milk in the Park (August 15) is a new festival for London’s Vauxhall with some top names involved. Horse Meat Disco will be hosting the main arena with a great line-up of PAs and DJs, alongside cabaret legend (and Gay Bingo host) Jonny Woo. Read the full story

Frank’s Closet, (until July 25), is an original ‘Music Hall Musical’ inspired by the traditions of the British music hall and 20th century pop songs, and appropriately staged at what is regarded as one of the finest remaining Victorian music halls in London, Hoxton Hall.

Frank is to be married to Alan, and while clearing out his closet and explaining his life thus far the closet brings forth a series of divas, played by (“the astonishing” – Time Out) Carl Mullaney, who morphs from an old music hall dowager to impressions of Julie Andrews, Ethel Merman, Judy Garland, Karen Carpenter, Marie Lloyd and Agnetha Faltskog.
 
Amongst its many superb reviews, Time Out said: ”Exactly 40 years on from Judy Garland’s death in London, this show is the perfect tribute to live camp fabulousness. It reclaims gay culture – from multimedia, ‘Mamma Mia!’ and yes, ‘Bruno’ – and celebrates it in all its dazzling, kitsch wonder: steeped in cultural history, hilarious, irreverent, triumphant.”
 
www.hoxtonhall.co.uk

When, in 1979, New York photographer Martin Schreiber paid $30 for a shoot with an unknown and impoverished dance school student named Madonna Ciccone, he couldn’t have guessed what would happen next. But six years later, at the beginning of her rise to superstardom, he remembered what he had in his files and the session was notoriously published in Playboy magazine in September 1985.
 
The Madonna Nudes – 30th Anniversary exhibition, at 19 Earlham Street WC2 (July 2 – 19), coinciding with the now 50-year old star’s Sticky and Sweet tour dates in London, shows her as she was naked when aged just 20. The black and white series of photographs are on sale from £3400, along with the first showing of the original Polaroid test shot, a one-off predicted to fetch in excess of £40,000, beating the $37,500 achieved at auction earlier this year for the Lee Friedlander shot which also appeared in the 1985 Playboy. But those unable to stretch that far needn’t go away empty-handed: exclusive Madonna Nudes memorabilia including postcards, books, badges and original copies of the Playboy edition are available for as little as £1.
 
www.sevendials.co.uk

Running until July 6, POUT  (Proud and Out Cinema Week)  is a presentation of 14 iconic and contemporary LGBT films in association with London Pride. Peccadillo Pictures, Verve Pictures, ICA, Club Des Femmes and Curzon Cinemas have united to create a programme intending to cover all the bases, from ground-breaking British lesbian cult classics The World Ten Times Over and The Killing of Sister George to the award-winning documentaries Before Stonewall and The Times of Harvey Milk, taking in the notorious Hustler White, international dramas and the latest releases including Dream Boy from the US and the UK’s semi-improvised docu-drama Greek Pete, which follows a group of London rent boys for six months.
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www.pridelondon.org 

In association with Pride London, Foyles, the renowned London bookseller, stages two literary events bringing together some of the UK’s finest gay and lesbian writers. Pride Words (June 22) is an opportunity to hear leading novelists read and talk about their latest work, with Stella Duffy (Stonewall Writer of the Year 2008 and author of The Room of Lost Things), Adam Mars-Jones (Pilcrow), Mia Farlane (Footnotes to Sex), Karen Mcleod (In Search of the Missing Eyelash) and LAMBDA Award Finalist Drew Gummerson (Me and Mickie James). Who’s the Daddy? (June 23), presented by Chroma, the queer literary journal, is an evening of confessional, sentimental and wholesomely kinky poetry and live music on the multifaceted theme of fatherhood, featuring singer-songwriter Marie Tueje, playwright and poet Berta Freistadt, poet and critic Cherry Smyth, Gold Inkwell winner for poetry and drama Andra Simons and Chroma Editor Shaun Levin.
 
www.foyles.co.uk