The Pride

Played against a striking but simple set, Alexi Kaye Campbell’s acclaimed drama shifts cunningly from the late 1950s to the first decade of the 21st century with extraordinary power. Juxtaposing the lives of a married couple and a gay man who is invited into their marriage in the time of oppression and indeed illegality, with a modern gay couple who simply cannot co-exist because one party is promiscuous, works well. In simple terms the play exposes the idea that the supposed equality of modern of gay life does not come without problems.

The cast of four take on all of the roles; Harry Hadden-Paton plays the repressed homosexual Philip with a real sense of self loathing and fear. His portrayal of the contemporary lover, unable to live with his sluttish partner is delicate and understated. Al Weaver plays the bookish gay author Oliver, seeking to live an honest life, with an underlying energy and power, carefully masked by his apparent gentleness. Naomi Sheldon plays the wife, aware of her husband’s troubled soul, she feeds him to the lions, but in choosing Oliver she merely sends him into a further pit of despair that ends with him seeking radical therapy. In her role as the friend of promiscuous Oliver she is the conduit for Oliver to explain his obsession with anonymous sexual encounters but this she does well, eventually telling him that she cannot continue to be his sounding board.

Mathew Horne gives a series of poignant cameos, that in one sense could be seen as light relief. Nothing could be further from true. His Nazi-clad rent boy is equally a victim of modern gay life, a commoditised body, available at a price to suit any fantasy, and in his parting moment explaining that he too has feelings. As the ‘lad’s mag’ editor his brash awareness of the market forces driving his career, is countered by a moving moment in which he recalls a childhood experience, meeting his gay uncle who is dying of AIDS and the partner that has been hidden.

Horne finally appears in a role which does not exploit his natural comic charm, psychiatrist, whose chilling words strike deep. Horne is clearly as good a straight actor as he is comic.

The Pride looks at the legacy of gay culture as it comes out of the closet, it looks at what we might have to be proud about – or not, but perhaps the real truth is that, whatever the circumstances, the gender mix, human relationships are a bloody battlefield.

Theatre Royal Brighton, 15 January 2014

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