Plague Over England - Finborough Theatre
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
A NEW play by Nicholas de Jongh, Plague Over England, receives its world premiere at Finborough Theatre – from Wednesday, February 27 to Saturday, March 22, 2008.
In Autumn 1953, Sir John Gielgud, then at the height of his fame as an actor, was arrested in a Chelsea public lavatory. He pleaded guilty the following morning to the charge of persistently importuning men for immoral purposes.
Poised to appear in the West End in a play he was directing and recently knighted, Gielgud’s conviction caused a sensation, threatened the continuation of his career and helped break the great taboo on the general discussion of homosexuality in the national press. A great national debate began with The Observer accusing those who spoke out against the actor of “speaking in the rabble-rousing tone of the witch-hunt.”
More than just a dramatisation of a scandalous event in one actor’s life, de Jongh’s epic play whose characters include the Home Secretary, the Lord Chief Justice, a public schoolboy, a pretty policeman and a lavatory attendant, suggests that the response to Gielgud’s conviction reflected the anxious political and social mood of the time.
Britain had begun to follow America’s lead in regarding homosexuals as potential security risks, and judges, politicians and policemen expressed alarm at the rise in the number of cases coming before the courts. Gielgud’s conviction played a small but distinct part in the long battle to make homosexuality legal.
The play captures the spirit of Britain in the early 1950s –when judges, politicians and doctors were describing homosexuality in terms of a cancer, an epidemic and a threat to national life – and offers an extraordinary insight into the dramatic changes in social attitudes to gay life in the last fifty years.
Tamara Harvey directs a cast that includes Jasper Britton as Sir John Gielgud, Olivier Award nominee David Burt, Simon Dutton, Olivier Award winner Nichola McAuliffe and John Warnaby as a supercilious, old fashioned theatre reviewer; plus David Barnaby, Steve Hansell, Leon Ockenden, Timothy Watson and Robin Whiting.
Harvey’s recent credits include Young Emma and Something Cloudy, Something Clear (Finborough Theatre) and the acclaimed tHe dYsFUnCKshOnalZ! (Bush Theatre). Her other credits include One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Whipping It Up, Bash and Much Ado About Nothing.
Nicholas de Jongh has been theatre critic of the Evening Standard since 1991. His books include Not in Front of the Audience, a history of homosexuality on stage; and Politics, Pruderies and Perversions, a history of theatre censorship in the UK, which won the Society of Theatre Research Prize in 2001, and which he dramatised for a performance at the Royal Court in 1996.
Plague Over England is designed by Alex Marker, with lighting by James Farncombe, costume design by Penn O’Gara and sound by Colin Pink.
Tickets: £15; £11 concessions, except Tuesday evenings £11 all seats and Saturday evenings £15 all seats; previews (February 27 and 28) £9 all seats.
Times: Tuesday to Saturday evenings – 7.30pm; Saturday and Sunday matinees – 3pm.
Performance length: Approximately 2 hours.
For more information call the box office on 0844 847 1652 or visit the website.