My Son's a Queer Reviews: What the Critics Say

Rob Madge's solo show played the Apollo from 16 September to 3 October 2026. It had been reviewed before, because it was the same production that played the Garrick Theatre in the West End in autumn 2022, written and performed by the same person.

Two of the reviews were five stars, two were four, and the lowest was three.

The Critics' Verdict

Nobody disliked it. The disagreement was about how much it does, not how well it does it.

Time Out gave it five: "You'll be hard-pressed to find a more joyous, life-affirming show in the West End right now than this one."

Gay Times also gave it five, and counted the room: "This heart-warming tale received no fewer than three standing ovations, playing to a full house. It packs a huge emotional punch over its scarcely-60-minute running time."

The Telegraph gave it four, calling it "the bittersweet tale of a boy desperate to be Belle", and admitted to being won over: "Even this cynical critic was undone by the touching revelation of Rob's grandparents' labour of love: a homemade puppet theatre."

The Standard gave it four: "A joyful love letter to self-expression."

The Times gave it three, and still described an audience that "whooped, screamed and shouted".

What the Reviews Praised

Rob Madge. Every review comes back to the performer. The Telegraph noted the show is "creatively designed"; Time Out credited Madge with singing Pippa Cleary's songs "with gentle self-irony", which "steer the show clear of easy sentimentality".

The family at the centre of it. The show is built from home videos of Madge staging Disney shows in the living room as a child, with their father as straight man. The Standard called it "a joyful love letter to self-expression and to Coventry-born Madge's parents". The Telegraph's homemade-puppet-theatre line is the same point.

That it is funny as well as moving. Gay Times described an audience "visibly moved on numerous occasions, while also having us regularly howling with laughter".

Where Reviews Were Mixed

One criticism turns up again and again: it is short, and it does not dig deep. Three separate critics reached for almost the same word.

• The Standard: "a sameness of tone throughout a show that is, at just over an hour, on the slender side"
• The Times: "charming but slender confessional", and "it may not dig very deep"
• The Telegraph: "strangely underwritten in places"

What that meant. The show ran 65 minutes with no interval, so it was an hour rather than an evening. If you wanted a story that goes hard at the difficult parts, the critics were saying this one keeps its footing on the warm side.

What Audiences Say

Audience reaction runs warmer than the critics'. The words that come up most are entertaining, delightful, absorbing and clever, and the standing ovations the reviews describe are not a one-off.

Where audiences do push back, they push back on the same thing the critics did: some find it uneven, and some wanted more from the songs.

Who My Son's a Queer Suited

• Anyone who wanted a warm, funny, moving hour with a performer at the top of their game.
• Teenagers. It was recommended for 12 and over and the reviews describe a room laughing and crying in equal measure.
• Less so anyone who wanted the difficult version of this story. The critics who marked it down did so because it stays hopeful.

The show, its run history and where it might go next are on our My Son's a Queer page.

Sources

Reviews quoted are of the Garrick Theatre run, 21 October to 6 November 2022, the same production. Time Out (Tom Wicker), Gay Times (Chris Selman), The Telegraph (Marianka Swain), The Standard (Nick Curtis), The Times (Clive Davis). The Apollo run has not yet been reviewed.