Review by Simon Jenner, May 23rd 2025
How 2025 this all is. Section 28 – and many younger people have now never heard of it, as the writers’ podcast proves – is back. More or less. In more ways than one. Legislation outlawing “the promotion of homosexuality” lasted 15 years till 2003; proving Westminster’s homophobia remained with Labour after 1997. Billy Barrett and Ellice Stevens’ furious, loveable and upbeat verbatim musical After The Act arrives at Royal Court Downstairs with music by Frew, directed by Barrett and playing till June 14th.
Ericka Posadas and Nkara Stephenson. Photo Credit: Alex Brenner
It premiered in 2023 at the New Diorama, then Traverse Edinburgh; and has toured from 2024. Even during this time some of its presentiments have darkened. The finale’s celebratory wrap of defiance, taking us back to 1988, seems both absolutely right and sorely outflanked. Frew’s music fits the verbatim filleting perfectly, with the big numbers carrying the energy to make it memorable.
The verbatim comes from teachers students, activists, both houses of parliament, ‘concerned’ gaslit parents and council staff at Haringey. Then more personal witness in the much shorter Act Two.
Starting with a flash-forward as Sarah and Charlotte (Ellice Stevens, Ericka Posadas) invade The Six O’Clock News, we’re spooled back to 1984 through 1988, closing Act One when the same activists (ten in reality) abseil down into the House of Lords and are congratulated by the police. The second act, the eponymous title, charts the years from 1987 to 2021. With that finale’s nostalgic blast back to the Manchester protest of February 1988, as if that act of defiance and celebration is missing from our lives. Trouble is, it is, and again there’s loud silence, as mentioned here. Recent legal proclamations on Trans people are greeted with dismay and fury amongst some (particularly the stalwart left, with Socialist Workers providing the backbone of protest at Manchester), but with nothing like the energy of 1988. It’s touched on here but if that finale morphed to today it would cease to be a neat nostalgia flip back to glory days that were in truth very dark.
Photo: Credit Alex Brenner
Though an ensemble play, that Chinese official Kaja Chan impresses too as an interrogator on screen as she grills Hong Kong cartoonist Robin Khor Yong Kuan. It’s the longest scene, opening Act Two, and skews any one-sided debate about cultural appropriation, rights and artefacts. China might revere its past, but though Chan’s official cos-plays admiring the cartoonist, she wants to nail him: “Are you a homosexual” she asks with casual venom, then announces she’s arrested his boyfriend, as he sits on a chair, feet in the water. The final scene too highlights the million (of 11 million) Uighurs incarcerated, tortured, murdered. Chan is a young woman abducted as Khor Yong Kuan makes suicidal demands, in almost pitch black, stabbed by torches.
Fiona Hampton, first a Witch offering numinous western love, then a compromised British academic also in conflict with Sky Yang (a scene scintillating in banana-peels and liberal imperialist assumptions), finally adopts an Arkansas drawl as a despised western woman in a scene involving Jon Chew and Khor Yong Kuan. Yang also enjoys a monologue as a non-binary Poet
Chew’s two great moments come as a sardonic businessman who says, before delivering a crushing lesson to his young admirer Khor Yong Kuan: “They were strong once, which is how they took from us. And now that they’re on their way out? We take things from them… All of human history? It’s basically people taking things from each other. That’s a story worth paying for” “I should be writing this down” replies his admirer, with Tan’s wink firmly at the audience. Another scene unleashes a Scottish soldier from 1860 (twice seen performing a violent act) whose monologue ends as he too becomes a rigid pawn, a victim of his own atrocities.
Photo Credit: Alex Brenner
Nkara Stephenson. Photo Credit: Alex Brenner
Haringey is where it all started with that book translated from the Danish: Janet/Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin. There were indeed only a few copies for reference. It provides a flashpoint of media-fuelled hatred and parents asserting gay teachers are turning their children into gays and lesbians “to reproduce” themselves. Any of that sound suddenly more familiar than it did a few years ago? Council staff are outflanked by hatred, since “reason” can never outgun hate and fear. Enter Dame Jill Knight and alter Thatcher (Stevens) but at least there’s some desperate laughter along the way. “Abseiling lesbians” becomes a byword. Some teachers are blindsided by questions. There’s a moment as Zachary Willis describes how he realised studying A Streetcar Named Desire was a gay play, and one teacher was able to discuss it, proclaiming next year she might well not be able to.
The outfall in Act Two is where the heart of the show beats loud in silence. Stevens as Catherine a PE teacher with her girlfriend encounters a sixth form student (Posadas) at a gay bar and thinks her career’s over. When that student approaches her for advice instead she tells “You’re not gay. Don’t be so ridiculous.” If she hadn’t, she’s convinced even many years later she’d have lost her whole career: but naturally is haunted. It’s heartbreaking and utterly chilling. In “the silence is deafening” Nkara Stephenson’s LB describes trying to conform to gender-typical love of a boyfriend and Willis’ Ian too describes the same process after being bullied in the 1990s, round the time (as it happened) Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing came out defiantly in 1993. Posadas’ May is another activist who also talks of “the silence is deafening”. These characters fast-forward their lives. LB’s able to come out as non-binary at 36. A fragile serenity around 2021 recalls Section 28. The struggle for trans rights is touched on. Four years on, we’re back with 28 by stealth. Many in the audience already see that if unchecked the forces of reaction will roll back LGBTQIA+, women’s reproductive rights and indeed any rights at all.
Zakk Hein’s video work is graphically helpful and neatly integrated, bursting into rapture with the Manchester footage. Choreographed by Sung-Im Her, the four actors dance parodically (around Stevens’ Thatcher), mimic, but above all celebrate when in activist roles. Lit by Jodie Underwood (occasionally the spotlighting isn’t synched, but should be for the run), the flight of colours evokes the time too. As do the prop-light set and costumes by Bethany Wells, Owen Crouch’s sound and co-music production with music direction by Martin Lowe is visible as well as audible stage-right.
Verbatim theatre generates its own narratives and field. It’s sometimes hard to steer but here of course it’s a patchwork of voices, mostly chronological, arranged sometimes for affect. Naturally some more i in that second act would have been welcome, but it’s clear there’s only so much witness a musical can take. If it feels a little light here it’s still punchy, but it’s the awkward decision to spool back to Manchester in February 1988 that seems wrong, unless it morphs to today. Perhaps history has sadly fund the big finish and perennial warning we all need. And bless ‘em the SWP placards on display here are still out there, not drowning but waving. Most of all this musical is necessary. With four outstanding multi-roling performers, a message both affirmative and defiant; and with a fierce joy that makes it a must-see.
Sound System Designer Ed Clarke, Casting Director Nick Hockaday, Executive Producer Sally Cowling, General Manager Katie Sherrard, Production Manager Paul Milford, Technical Elliott Sheppard, Sound No. 1 Matt Coulson, Stage Manager Company Stage Manager Esther Malkinson.
Zachary Willis. Photo Credit: Alex Brenner
