Presented for the first time since its world premiere in 1958 and celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 which decriminalised homosexuality in the UK, Quaint Honour by Roger Gellert runs at the Finborough Theatre, playing Sunday and Monday evening and Tuesday matinees from Sunday, 29 October 2017.
A boy’s boarding school in the late 1950s. Homosexuality in the UK is illegal, but behind closed doors and behind the back of the Headmaster, gay sexual activity between the students is rife.
When one of the pupils accepts a challenge to seduce a younger student, he sets in motion a dangerous game of manipulation and corruption, causing devastating consequences that neither student could ever have imagined…
Examining the effects of sexual oppression at a time when the lives of young queer people were challenged by both the law and the education system, this highly controversial and brutally frank play – originally produced at the Arts Theatre to avoid the censorship of the Lord Chamberlain – is now presented onstage for the first time in over half a century. Kenneth Tynan said of the original production that it is “The most honest and informative play about homosexuality that has yet been performed in England’.
The cast comprises: Jack Archer, Simon Butteriss, Oliver Gully, Jacques Miche, and Harley Viveash.