Review: AFTER THE ACT, Royal Court

To pin an entire show on one piece of local government legislation may seem an implausible move at first glance. But After The Act has made it happen, which is testament to the seismic impact and notoriety of its subject: Section 28, the Thatcher-era clause that, until 2003, forbade local authorities across the UK from “intentionally promoting homosexuality” as a “pretended family relationship” in state-maintained schools.

Constructed in a vignette structure using verbatim testimony from a variety of interviewees – writers Billy Barrett and Ellice Stevens specialise in verbatim theatre, with previous subjects including a rape trial in Renaissance Rome – After The Act highlights with crushing directness the sheer range of queer lives touched by Section 28.

An impressive multi-roling cast of four take us at breakneck speed through the Eighties and Nineties, playing the children whose first experience of gay life was public service broadcasts about AIDs, the lesbian PE teacher unable to support her queer students without losing her job, the non-binary individual sent to state-sanctioned church conversion therapy.

But this is more than the sum of its parts, much more than just a range of individually interesting personal stories. Verbatim theatre can easily become a selection of anecdotes without a coherent structure, but After The Act never fails to remind us of the contexts in which its characters lived.

The several scenes set in Parliament or at council meetings are always frenetically lit and choreographed in contrast to the vulnerable, pared-back verbatim monologues, conjuring a sense of moral panic that operates on a plane entirely separate to the people whose lives it alters. Poignantly, the main set is littered with those particular wooden benches that every UK primary school in the Nineties and early Noughties had – after the endless parliamentary fearmongering, it’s actually the children who suffer.

In its second act, After The Act is slightly too unsubtle in pointing to parallels with current homophobia and especially transphobia, which is perhaps a depressing reflection of how much clearer these parallels have become since the show’s 2022 premiere. Indeed, there’s no need for anyone to state the obvious – an early scene where local parents in Haringey protest a children’s book featuring same-sex parents already contains chilling reminiscences of contemporary “think of the children” cries against schools supporting trans pupils, or libraries hosting drag queen story hour.

What I haven’t mentioned thus far is that After The Act is a musical, and the elements of music and dance perhaps need a little more work. Pumping Pet Shops Boys-esque synthpop beats sometimes threaten to overwhelm some quite illuminating lyrics, and some of the choreography distracts from rather than enhances the script. This is a minor complaint, though – that second act high-camp Thatcher impression, complete with musical number satirising her infamous 1987 “children are being cheated” speech, is an act of resistance of a different kind.

After The Act is a perfect balance of queer life in public and in private – the individuals who inspired it have the space to be interesting in their own right, to be more than the headlines that sought to demonise them, but equally the show never loses sight of how those headlines have got us to where we are, especially in the wake of the recent Supreme Court ruling on trans people’s legal status. The result is confrontational, painfully timely, and if you will excuse the theatre criticism cliche, essential viewing.

After The Act runs at the Royal Court until 14 June