Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Hayley Atwell, Harry Hadden-Paton, Mathew Horne, Al Weaver.
Occasionally a play grabs you by the hand and takes you to places that you never thought you would ever see performed on stage, such was the power of Alexi Kaye Campbell’s writing and the absolute conviction of Hayley Atwell, Harry Hadden-Paton, Mathew Horne and Al Weaver’s performances and the nature of the subject made The Pride compelling, forceful and required watching.
The tortured and embittered life of Philip, played by Mr. Hadden-Paton and his wife Sylvia, an outstanding performance by Ms. Atwell, is the cornerstone to The Pride’s beginning, the slow realisation of Sylvia that her husband’s unhappiness is caused by his unwillingness to accept his hidden homosexuality. The play shifts between the changing attitudes of the times they focus on, the pre-1967 world in which to be gay was to face ridicule, jail and so-called medical treatments which was barbaric and disgusting way of so called curing people and 21st Century Britain which is more enlightened, compassionate in some cases and unlike a country on the fringes of Europe, thankfully no longer believes it to be either a crime or a disability to be gay.
Away from Mr. Hadden-Paton and Ms. Atwell’s stunning performances, much must also be said for Mathew Horne who played every other part with such creativity and understanding that it was a with deep joy to watch him on stage and the fantastic Al Weaver who played both gay men separated by 60 years with aplomb.
Throughout it all, the introspection, the close look at society through the eyes of the men living their life during the 1950s and the kinder, more accepting world in 21st Century Britain was a deep reflection of the world in which understanding of love between any two people has yet to filter through to some areas of so-called modern culture. The cast were sublime, the writing intelligent and witty and yet with the knowledge that no matter what all we really desire is to be loved and to love, to not feel the bitterness of loneliness. Loneliness, which in all terms that can ever be written and thought about, is a true and undisguised ugliness that blights people’s lives.
The Pride is a genius of a play and one to certainly feel both pride and deep shame in equal measure in. Pride that Britain made things right, shame that some areas of the world will not recognise the message behind this great play.
Ian D. Hall