THE PRIDE Trafalgar Studios

Alexi Kaye Campbell’s play was much lauded when it premiered at the Royal Court in 2008, winning major awards, including Outstanding Achievement, Best New Play and Most Promising Playwright. Jamie Lloyd directed it then and he’s also directing this revival. The set looks elegant. The stage is bare but for two chairs. The backdrop is a huge tarnished mirror. The designer is Soutra Gilmour. The action alternates between 1958 and the present, examining changing attitudes to homosexuality in Britain. The play’s subject matter includes: self-knowledge; repression and liberation; denial and guilt; self-loathing and loneliness; promiscuity and monogamy; integrity and betrayal; addiction and aversion therapy. The complex script, sensitive, compassionate and witty, is essentially sad and, on two occasions, deeply shocking; but it never ever promulgates. The actors – Hayley Atwell, Harry Hadden-Paton, Al Weaver and Matthew Horne – are first-rate. Weaver’s body language, in particular, is always exactly right. The cast, in the curtain calls, appear with placards, which dedicate the performance to Russia, where gay persecution is rife.