Moving portrayal of a hidden tribe
Queers. Performed at The Priory Theatre, Kenilworth Friday 18 September, running until Saturday 19 September 2026. Curated by Mark Gatiss for the BBC. Directed by Mark Jefferies.
Review by Charles Essex
Spanning 100 years in this clever series of soliloquies, seven characters discussed their inner thoughts of being LGBQT+ against the norms and attitudes of their eras. The themes discussed gave an indication of the decade, especially if one knew gay history in the 20th Century, as did the background music, although the latter was at times irritatingly intrusive. The lighting of the backdrop was the multicolours of the Pride flag.
Percy (Tom Leon-Grimes) was a medical orderly in WW1. Initially discussing his role in the hospital near the front line, he explained the tacit recognition that passed between homosexual men. He and a senior officer had an unspoken attraction, but the army transferred each of them to different units at the first suspicion of impropriety so any hope of comfort in the hell of the trenches was thwarted.
Alison Bennett portrayed a Burlington Bertie character in top hat and tails, clothes that she had kept when they were thrown out by her upper-class employee. Wearing these she came alive, freed from the drudgery of her job as a skivvy, enjoying the freedom granted to her as a seemingly wealthy man and able to satisfy her sapphism with women in unhappy marriages who thought she was a powerful man, only for this to be dashed with the one woman whom she loved.
Alice (Dawn Morris) found herself in an uncomfortable situation – married to a closet gay man. Dawn described Alice’s confusion and frustration at the lack of consummation of the marriage. She was angry at her mother-in-law, who knew her son’s sexual orientation, yet such was the shame of homosexuality that she pushed him into marriage and encouraged Alice to have an affair if necessary. Dawn portrayed how she came to accommodate her husband’s liaisons and the mutual affection between them built over years of marriage.
By the late 1960s Jackie (Mark Jefferies) reminisced about his early years of illicit one off homosexual encounters for money. Mark conveyed Jackie’s promiscuity and nostalgia for the days of uncomplicated and uncommitted sex. The legalisation of homosexuality meant that younger generations thought more in terms of longer-term relationships and cohabiting.
After the interval, there were three terrific performances, each one very different. We were in the 80s and Connor Cunnigham was an actor frequently given roles as a patient dying of AIDS, which paradoxically he humorously related. However, he superbly conveyed a distinct change of mood as he described his boyfriend admitting he had AIDS. The anger at their persecution and pariah status because of the ‘gay plague’ was visceral.
Julien Rosa gave an awesome performance as the teenager, nervous, awkward, garrulous, inexperienced, finding his way in, for him, a new world in which the age of consent was lowered to 18 years old. The cleverest scenario of the evening was Adam (Ben Wellicome, who stepped in to his role at short notice and gave one of his best performances to date) who was rehearsing his wedding speech. His description of his youth being bullied and assaulted at school was moving as he described what had previous seemed an unattainable goal of marrying the person he loved, which heterosexual people take for granted.
Curated by actor Mark Gattiss, the experiences of each character cleverly combined humour, anger, poignancy, fear and hope, as they sat at a small table in a pub, observing and commenting on the world around them. It depicted brilliantly how far social mores have changed in the last century.
For tickets: https://priorytheatre.co.uk/whatson/queers
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