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New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
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Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Evening Standard rating
Reader rating
Dir: Tamara Harvey.
Cast: Michael Feast, David Burt, Simon Dutton, Celia Imrie, Hugh Ross, John Warnaby, Michael Brown, Steven Hansall, Sam Heughan, Leon Ockenden
Description: Tamara Harvey directs Nicholas De Jongh's drama about the arrest of Sir John Gielgud, which proved to be a turning-point in the battle to make homosexuality legal.
Trains: Tube: Covent Garden 
Phone: 0870890 1103
Website: www.nimaxtheatres.com
Giel-goodie: Michael Feast as John Gielgud with Celia Imrie and John Warnaby in a terrific first play by the Standard’s theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh
On 21 October 1953, John Gielgud — the dream-voiced Shakespearean star of his generation, and knight of the realm — walked into a public lavatory off the Fulham Road. There, he exchanged a few nods and prods with a young man who winked at him — and triggered Britain’s highest profile prosecution for homosexuality since Oscar Wilde.
In Plague Over England, the entrapment of Gielgud by a “pretty policeman” is the centre of gravity for a play that swoops across the gay underworld of Fifties London — from the bushes of St James’s Park strewn with guardsmen to the Whitehall clubs where the crackdown on this “filth” is planned.
As Gielgud is convicted and shamed, a self-consciously gay London is emerging around him from the darkness of the lavatories and parks, trying to find light. As panicked men approach their doctors for help with their “disorder”, they are prescribed oestrogen to shrivel up their genitals, or electric shocks to burn their urges away. And in the middle of it stands Gielgud, an empty, air-headed genius, so great at donning masks because there is so little there. When he is caught, he mutters only a pitiful, desperate: “I’m sorry.” He sees no chance for political redemption: when somebody urges him to act like a suffragette, he laments: “Ah, but they had a just cause.” He only achieves eloquence once in the play when, lost and facing ruin, he turns to the audience and quotes Shakespeare’s Richard II: “What must the King do now? Must he submit?... Must he lose/ the name of king? O God’s name, let it go.” Gielgud is only himself when he is pretending.
The play’s author, Nicholas de Jongh, is best known as the acerbic theatre critic for the Evening Standard. But here, in his terrific first play, he sensitively traces a lost world: the dark waltz of cottaging where men circle each other for small signs of lust, and of politicians pledging to “eliminate homosexuality” from these crevices.
He manages to pull onto the stage the inner lives of a remarkable range of characters, and only fails in his depictions of the homophobes. They had complex, disturbing motives of their own — but here they are buffoonish caricatures motivated by only idiocy.
Of course, Michael Feast has an impossible job playing Gielgud. Nobody can bring back that voice — as pure and seductive as a Caribbean ocean — and nobody can bring back those eyes. But it is an extraordinary tribute that at times, there are flickers of the lost actor. As the play swings forward to the Seventies and the age of gay liberation, he captures the pathos of Gielgud still agonising. “The parade,” he says softly, “has passed me by.”
Fifty-six years after Gielgud ended up in court for a harmless act, it is a victory that “his crime” can now be re-enacted so compellingly on stage — in the knowledge the audience will damn the police, not the gay man.
Booking to 16 May. Box office: 0870 890 1103
CLICK HERE for our exclusive £20 ticket offer for Plague over England
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Woeful. Terrible dialogue, wafer thin characterisation and a succession of under-developed characters who are mere walking cliches. Celia Imrie looks embarrassed - particularly in the excruciating "gay bar" scenes. Sam Heughan does look beautiful though.
- Quentin, London
An excellent play with really good acting. Just returned from a week of theatre in London. This is one of the best I saw. Thought the sets were great also. Thanks for a wonderful afternoon at the theatre .
- Tom Hendricks, Matthews, N.C. USA
I absolutely adored "Plague Over England", best new play I have seen for a long time. The whole cast were superb.
- Blue Baby, London
I saw the play on a recent visit to London thanks to the fortuitous cancellation of a planned tour. It turned out to be a highlight of my trip! It shows how far we have come in the past 50 years, not only in the UK but in the US. A well-done and interesting play. I am so glad I had a chance to see it.
- Larry Stamler, Yonkers, NY, USA
A simply terrific play. It had everything. We could relate to so much of it.
A great deal to say about hypocritical England then and now. Splendidly acted and a very fine production
5 stars.
- Russell Armitage, Walsall, England
