2022 commemorates 50 years since the first United Kingdom Pride took place. Tower Theatre celebrates this landmark anniversary in LGBTQI+ history by staging four of the Queers monologues written by Mark Gatiss, Jackie Clune, Keith Jarrett and Jon Bradfield. The plays explore what it meant to be a part of this community in the proceeding first half of the 20th Century and reaffirms just how much progress we have made.
Queers was originally commissioned to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act. This act decriminalised homosexual acts in private between two men over the age of twenty-one and was a considerable milestone in achieving homosexual law reform. Poignant and personal, funny and tragic, these monologues are deeply affecting and personal rites-of-passage stories. Our production of Queers consists of four of the original eight monologues, which celebrate the first half century of evolving social attitudes and political milestones in British gay history.
The Man on the Platform by Mark Gatiss
1917: A young soldier returning from the trenches of the First World War recollects a love that dare not speak its name.
The Perfect Gentleman by Jackie Clune
1929: Bobby is a swaggering man about town, but he has a secret. Can it survive when it really matters?
Safest Spot in Town by Keith Jarrett
1941: As the Blitz hits London, Fredrick is grateful that he survived in a very unlikely place of refuge.
Missing Alice by Jon Bradfield
1957: Alice and her husband share a secret but with the 1957 Wolfenden Report’s publication, it need not be a secret anymore.
Queers – a series of monologues curated by Mark Gatiss is at The Tower Theatre 29th June – 9th July 2022.
