De Jongh's PLAGUE OVER LONDON Hits West End at the Duchess 2/11

London Evening Standard theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh's Plague Over London, which was first presented at the tiny Finbourgh Theatre in Earls Court will transfer to the West End. It begins a limited engagement at the Duchess Theatre on February 11th, 2009.

The play is described in press notes as, "in Autumn 1953, Sir John Gielgud, then at the height of his fame as an actor, was arrested in a Chelsea public lavatory. He pleaded guilty the following morning to the charge of persistently importuning men for immoral purposes. Poised to appear in the West End in a play he was directing and recently knighted, Gielgud's conviction caused a sensation, threatened the continuation of his career and helped break the great taboo upon general discussion in the national press of homosexuality. A great national debate began with The Observer accusing those who spoke out against Sir John of "speaking in the rabble- rousing tone of the witch-hunt."

More than just a dramatisation of a scandalous event in one actor's life, de Jongh's epic play whose characters include the Home Secretary, the Lord Chief Justice, a public schoolboy, a pretty policeman and a lavatory attendant, suggests that the response to Gielgud's conviction reflected the anxious political and social mood of the time. Britain had begun to follow America's lead in regarding homosexuals as potential security risks, and judges, politicians and policemen expressed alarm at the rise in the number of cases coming before the courts. Gielgud's conviction played a small but distinct part in the long battle to make homosexuality legal. The play captures the spirit of Britain in the early 1950s - when judges, politicians and doctors were describing homosexuality in terms of a cancer, an epidemic and a threat to national life - and offers an extraordinary insight into the dramatic changes in social attitudes to gay life in the last fifty years.

Nicholas de Jongh has been theatre critic of the Evening Standard since 1991. His books include Not in Front of the Audience, a history of homosexuality on stage; and Politics, Pruderies and Perversions, a history of theatre censorship in the UK, which won the Society of Theatre Research Prize in 2001, and which he dramatised for a performance at the Royal Court in 1996. He also contributed a one act play to the Royal Court's May Days season in 1991. Plague Over England recently received a rehearsed reading at the Royal Court Theatre.

Director Tamara Harvey returns to the Finborough Theatre following her sell-out Time Out Critics' Choice productions of Young Emma and Something Cloudy, Something Clear. She recently directed the acclaimed tHe dYsFUnCKshOnalZ! at the Bush Theatre. Her many other credits include One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, two WestEnd runs and UK Tour), Whipping It Up (West End), Bash (Trafalgar Studios), Touch Wood, Purvis, Storm in a Tea Chest and The Prodigal Son (Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough), Closer (Theatre Royal, Northampton), An Hour and a Half Late (Theatre Royal Bath and UK Tour), Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare's Globe), Who's the Daddy? (King's Head), Sitting Pretty (Watford Palace Theatre), and The Graduate (UK Tour).

Alex Marker is Resident Designer of the Finborough Theatre where his acclaimed designs have included Soldiers, Trelawny of the ‘Wells' , Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams, Albert's Boy, Lark Rise To Candleford, Red Night, The Representative, Eden's Empire, Love Child, Little Madam, Plague Over England, Hangover Square, and Sons of York.

PLAGUE OVER ENGLAND
by Nicholas de Jongh
Directed by Tamara Harvey
Designed by Alex Marker
Produced by Bill Kenwright

At the
Duchess Theatre
Catherine Street, London WC2B 5LA
Strictly Limited Season! 11 February - 16 May 2009
Box Office: 0844 412 4659