'After the Act' review — this engaging verbatim musical revisits the appalling Section 28 with a mix of anger and anarchy

Read our review of Billy Barrett and Ellice Stevens's After the Act, now in performances at the Royal Court to 14 June.

Although homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967, it wouldn’t be accepted in mainstream society for decades to come. In 1988, when fears around Aids were sky-high, the appallingly homophobic Section 28 was passed, a bill that banned the “promotion” of homosexuality in British schools. Billy Barrett (who also directs) and Ellice Stevens’s verbatim musical/play with music After the Act was commissioned in 2023 to mark the 20th anniversary of the bill’s revocation and now arrives at the Royal Court for a short run.

Filled with righteous anger as well as tongue-in-cheek anarchy, this likably chaotic show is a salient reminder that the culture wars didn’t start in the 2020s. The first half charts the lead-up to the implementation of Section 28 and the second explores its aftermath. Lizzy Leech’s set design leans into nostalgia with a gym wall and the same benches as in my primary school assembly hall, though the non-matching but coordinated costumes have a somewhat juvenile effect, as does the cartoonish style of Barrett’s production.

Performed by the engaging quartet of Stevens, Tika Mu’tamir, EM Williams and Zachary Willis, testimonies and other dialogue are set to ‘80s dance-style music by Frew (who also serves as musical director and comprises the band with Ellian Showering’s percussion), which mostly feature outbursts of uncontrollable emotion. In terms of set pieces, Margaret Thatcher as a disco diva reduces her to a camp caricature; more effective is notoriously homophobic Conservative MP Dame Jill Knight’s tirade as an unhinged power ballad.

Furious parents’ rights groups whip up a frenzy about the picture book Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin before social media was able to exacerbate fake news (“I’d love to know where you think the council has the resources to send 80,000 children a copy of a book,” a Haringey council worker wryly remarks). Zakk Hein’s video design features a smorgasbord of salacious headlines, including “dotty dykes” who break into the BBC and disrupt Sue Lawley’s News at Six broadcast and “‘Tarzan’ lesbians’ who abseiled into the House of Lords as an act of protest (there may have been some grudging admiration there).

The spoken monologues are the most powerful part. There’s “Mark” (Willis), who has his mind blown when he reads A Streetcar Named Desire and identifies intensely with Blanche (further cemented when he watches the film and experiences Marlon Brando’s Stanley). His teacher explains that if Section 28 is passed, she would no longer be able to teach the play, or at least be prohibited from explaining that Tennessee Williams was gay.

Heartbreakingly, “Catherine” (Stevens), a PE teacher, is spotted in a gay bar by one of her sixth formers and then turns said student away when she tries to confide in her because she would be risking her job if she were to “encourage” her. A lifetime of guilt ensues.

It would be good to learn more about how the bill was finally repealed in 2003, though the finale is a beautiful encapsulation of joy in the face of adversity: a protest in Manchester against the passing of the bill. A man who wasn’t yet out to his family recalls his first – jubilant – sexual encounter in a toilet on the day of the march. So much has changed yet there’s no room to be complacent about how far we’ve come in light of the present-day government-sanctioned hostility towards transgender people. Perhaps that will be its own verbatim musical in a few decades’ time, hopefully with an uplifting ending.

After the Act is at the Royal Court to 14 June. Book After the Act tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk.

Photo credit: After the Act (Photos by Alex Brenner)