by Nicholas de Jongh
Directed by Tamara Harvey
Designed by Alex Marker
Produced by Bill Kenwright
At the
Duchess Theatre
Catherine Street, London WC2B 5LA
Strictly Limited Season! 11 February – 16 May 2009
Box Office: 0844 412 4659
Visit the SOLT Official London Theatre guide link here
The Finborough Theatre production of Plague Over England has been nominated for
Best Off-West End production in this year's Whatsonstage Theatregoers Choice Awards. To vote, click here
* * * * Four Stars
The Times
* * * * Four Stars The Guardian
* * * * Four Stars Daily Express
* * * * Four Stars The Sunday Times
* * * * Four Stars The Mail on Sunday
* * * * Four Stars The Sunday Telegraph
* * * * Four Stars The Sunday Express
* * * * Four Stars Time Out
Named one of the Best Plays of 2008 The Stage
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 upon general discussion in the national press of homosexuality. A great national debate began with The Observer accusing those who spoke out against Sir John 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.
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. He also contributed a one act play to the Royal Court's May Days season in 1991. Plague Over England recently received a rehearsed reading at the Royal Court Theatre.
Director Tamara Harvey returns to the Finborough Theatre following her sell-out Time Out Critics’ Choice productions of Young Emma and Something Cloudy, Something Clear. She recently directed the acclaimed tHe dYsFUnCKshOnalZ! at the Bush Theatre. Her many other credits include One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, two WestEnd runs and UK Tour), Whipping It Up (West End), Bash (Trafalgar Studios), Touch Wood, Purvis, Storm in a Tea Chest and The Prodigal Son (Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough), Closer (Theatre Royal, Northampton), An Hour and a Half Late (Theatre Royal Bath and UK Tour), Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare’s Globe), Who’s the Daddy? (King’s Head), Sitting Pretty (Watford Palace Theatre), and The Graduate (UK Tour).
Alex Marker is Resident Designer of the Finborough Theatre where his acclaimed designs have included Soldiers, Trelawny of the ‘Wells’ , Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams, Albert’s Boy, Lark Rise To Candleford, Red Night, The Representative, Eden’s Empire, Love Child, Little Madam, Plague Over England, Hangover Square, and Sons of York. www.alexmarker.com
The Press on Plague Over England at the Finborough Theatre
“As a theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh doesn’t hesitate to dish it out when he dislikes a play, and now he’s written one himself, there may be bruised and buffeted dramatists who hope he’ll get it dished right back. If so, I must disappoint them, for Plague Over England, which involves homophobia in the early 1950s, gives a salutory jolt to our collective memory — and makes for a lively, absorbing evening.” Benedict Nightingale, The Times
“[De Jongh’s] work about the oppressive, anti-gay climate of the 1950s…is well-structured, important and sardonically funny.” Michael Billington, The Guardian
“It adds up to a portrait of an England well lost and, though often funny, a disturbing and even moving one.” Benedict Nightingale, The Times
“Tamara Harvey’s enterprising production remains fluent and lucid.”
Benedict Nightingale, The Times
“[De Jongh] portrays Gielgud with wit and sympathy and creates a superb leading role for Jasper Britton. What Britton captures is Gielgud's strange mix of classy hauteur and camp mischief.” Michael Billington, The Guardian
“I shan’t quickly forget Nichola McAuliffe’s Sybil Thorndike seeing Gielgud quaking in the Haymarket’s wings when he was meant to make his entrance and herself leaving the stage, taking his hand and quietly, lovingly leading him on.”
Benedict Nightingale, The Times
“Nichola McAuliffe embodies Dame Sybil in all her warm-heartedness and there is good support from David Burt as a sad toilet-attendant and John Warnaby as a theatre critic who lacks the courage of his convictions.” Michael Billington, The Guardian
“De Jongh provides a fascinating and revealing view of gay life in the ’50s.”
Jane Edwardes, Time Out
“Under Tamara Harvey’s fluent direction, the ten-strong cast relishes both the camp wit and the righteous horror of the establishment.”
Jane Edwardes, Time Out
“Jasper Britton brings a poignant note to Gielgud.”
Jane Edwardes, Time Out
“Nicholas de Jongh's moving and informative play, which has Gielgud's sudden fall from grace as its centrepiece.”
Paul Bailey, Evening Standard
“Lord Goddard…and the then Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, who described male homosexuality as a "plague over England", are presented without recourse to easy caricature.”
Paul Bailey, Evening Standard
“The first act of de Jongh's play comes across as a series of brilliant revue sketches, and that is entirely appropriate. There are laughs galore, most of them inspired by the author's witty script, but a good number emanating from the collective horse's mouth of all political persuasions, that sounded throughout the land during the last months of Coronation year.”
Paul Bailey, Evening Standard
“Jasper Britton's interpretation of Gielgud is deliciously subtle and understated. He captures the self-deprecation and glancing wit the actor brought to his dealings with fellow actors to something like perfection.”
Paul Bailey, Evening Standard
“[Britton] is helped by a resilient and talented supporting cast. John Warnaby plays a disillusioned, queeny theatre critic and David Maxwell Fyfe with equal confidence, and Nichola McAuliffe doubles as a kindly Sybil Thorndike and Vera Dromgoole, the camp hostess of a club for wonky gentlemen called Queen Mab. David Burt is successfully entrusted with three roles - a stage door keeper, a lavatory attendant and a waspish waiter.”
Paul Bailey, Evening Standard
“De Jongh's play…[shows] the range of coping or non-coping stratagems of 1950s homosexuals.”
Gerald Berkowitz, Theatre Guide London
“Jasper Britton gets the voice and the physical awkwardness exactly right.”
Gerald Berkowitz, Theatre Guide London
“With most of the cast doubling and tripling roles, Nichola McAuliffe shines as the quietly kindly Thorndike and the motherly hostess of the Soho gay club, Simon Dutton is strong as both Binkie Beaumont and a hanging judge, and David Burt steals all his scenes, be he bartender or lav attendant.”
Gerald Berkowitz, Theatre Guide London
“Tamara Harvey directs fluidly on a set inventively designed by Alex Marker to make the most of this tiny above-a-pub theatre space.”
Gerald Berkowitz, Theatre Guide London
“There is every reason to believe the show will soon transfer to a larger venue.”
Gerald Berkowitz, Theatre Guide London
“De Jongh’s play…is never less than highly enjoyable.”
Michael Coveney, Whats On Stage
“The most striking feature of de Jongh’s play…is the healthily sardonic outrage with which he treats the idea that homosexuality is a disease that might have been treated by aversion electro-therapy, overruled by law or even simply grown out of.”
Michael Coveney, Whats On Stage
“The consensual nature of most casual homosexual relationships was beyond general comprehension and public morality. Why de Jongh’s play matters is that, to some extent, it still is.”
Michael Coveney, Whats On Stage
“The play is carried by Jasper Britton’s superb Gielgud, nervous, funny and sleek, [and] buoyed along by Nichola McAuliffe’s brilliant double of a steadfast, sepulchral Sybil Thorndike and a garish hostess.”
Michael Coveney, Whats On Stage
“There are powerful, well crafted passages featuring Simon Dutton and John Warnaby as intolerant grandees and father figures.”
Michael Coveney, Whats On Stage
“Britton’s great actor remains aloof, vulnerable and slightly absurd to the end, a lovely study in lip-trembling deference and secret skittishness.”
Michael Coveney, Whats On Stage
“Jasper Britton makes a remarkably accurate Gielgud, tempering the aristocratic camp of a highly respected actor with the very real sense of fear at an uncertain future.”
Paul Vale, The Stage
“Nichola McAuliffe…is superb as Sybil Thorndike who supported her fellow performer through his ordeal, and also as the hilarious Vera Dromgoole.”
Paul Vale, The Stage
“The rest of the cast acquit themselves admirably, often in multiple roles, especially John Warnaby as theatre critic Chiltern Moncrieffe, David Burt with a spectacular line in manservants and Simon Dutton as a vaguely menacing Binkie Beaumont.”
Paul Vale, The Stage
“Robin Whiting and Leon Ockenden furnish an unlikely yet absorbing sub-plot with fine performances.”
Paul Vale, The Stage
“De Jongh has produced a fascinating piece, well-crafted and immensely sympathetic to its subject.”
Paul Vale, The Stage
“The writing and performances alone merit at least the possibility of a West End transfer.”
Paul Vale, The Stage
“Nicholas de Jongh has created an intelligent, entertaining and occasionally amusing play.”
Barry Grantham, Extra! Extra!
“The result is a piece of pure theatre which I hope to treasure for many years to come...Both actors and audience can relax in the hands of a skilful and experienced playwright.”
Barry Grantham, Extra! Extra!
“Jasper Britton as Gielgud himself and Nichola McAuliffe as Sybil Thorndike who, without descending to caricature, turn in convincing portraits…They give quite wonderful portraits of two rather remarkable people.”
Barry Grantham, Extra! Extra!
“The direction (Tamara Harvey) is excellent.”
Barry Grantham, Extra! Extra!
“The setting [is] ingenious (Alex Marker) with book flats opening to reveal a sleazy 1950’s bar, a gentleman’s book-lined study, a theatre dressing room, and most impressive, a tiled and marble urinal, the pride of its attendant (the versatile David Burt).”
Barry Grantham, Extra! Extra!
“Go and see it.”
Barry Grantham, Extra! Extra!
“De Jongh captures the spirit of the 1950’s in the hypocrisy of the law and the outward show of public life.”
Blanche Marvin, London Theatre Reviews
“An interesting fragmentation which Tamara Harvey keeps fluid by overlapping scenes within an ingenious set that opens in panels to bring an instant location.”
Blanche Marvin, London Theatre Reviews
“The evening goes to Jasper Britton who picks up on the wit of the dialogue along with its compassion [and] captures the essence of Gielgud…It’s [the] range of vocal colouring he is gifted with, that trembling humiliation, that pained anguish in the eyes, that one remembers.”
Blanche Marvin, London Theatre Reviews
“Nicola McAuliffe brings a warmth to Sybil Thondike and a delicious campiness as Queen Mab while John Warnaby, David Burt, Simon Dutton, Timothy Watson, Robin Whiting, Leon Ockenden, all bring powerful performances.”
Blanche Marvin, London Theatre Reviews
“It is a highly polished production with intense emotions on personal histories.”
Blanche Marvin, London Theatre Reviews
“De Jongh's play puts Sir John's arrest at its dramatic centre, but is also offers a panoramic view of the age.”
Charles Spencer, The Telegraph
“The play proves touching and true, memorably mixing its real-life characters with fictional ones, and evoking its period with wit and sensitivity.”
Charles Spencer, The Telegraph
“This is an ambitious production for such a tiny theatre, with an outstanding cast of ten playing 17 characters in a wide variety of locations.”
Charles Spencer, The Telegraph
“In this enthralling new play, [de Jongh] reveals a kind and sentimental heart that may surprise the victims of his more waspish reviews.”
Charles Spencer, The Telegraph
“Jasper Britton…marvellously captures the spirit of [Gielgud] with his mixture of dignity, self-doubt and downright silliness.”
Charles Spencer, The Telegraph
“Nichola McAuliffe is superb…as [Gielgud’s] kind and tactful co-star at the time, Dame Sybil Thorndike, capturing the very essence of Christian charity in action.”
Charles Spencer, The Telegraph
“David Burt is hilarious as a sonorous and slightly sinister public lavatory attendant, while Robin Whiting and Leon Ockenden capture all the rapture and pain of young gay love.”
Charles Spencer, The Telegraph
“Bravo, Nick!”
Charles Spencer, The Telegraph
“The play…has something valuable to say about theatre as well as life in the tale of John Gielgud’s temporary disgrace on a charge of gay cottaging in 1953.”
Michael Coveney, Whats on Stage
Image ©2006 John Hedgecoe/Topfoto
