Writer: Stephen M Hornby
Director: Oliver Hurst
In the 1950s, Britain was reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that gay people existed. Sex between two men was still a criminal offence, and the possibility that one man might be attracted to another was something that was never discussed openly. Criminal cases were often shrouded in innuendo and obfuscation, although high-profile trials involving celebrities, including John Gielgud and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, meant that the presence of gay people could no longer be completely ignored.
Some earnest radio producers at the BBC considered that the Corporation would have to, at some point, discuss the topic of homosexuality. While the very idea might have been thought unseemly – one of the fictional BBC producers portrayed in Stephen M Hornby’s script discusses “that word” coming into people’s homes through the same speaker which broadcasts the Queen’s Speech once a year – it is through dogged persistence that a documentary is eventually produced.
Originally created to coincide with the BBC’s centenary in 2022, Inkbrew Productions’ 2026 tour coincides with LGBTQ+ History Month, an apt time to reflect on what life was like for gay people some 70 years ago. Or rather, one should say, what it was like for gay men: lesbians don’t get so much as a look-in, save for a brief appearance when fictional Manchester tailor, Tom (Mitchell Wilson), meets the wife of a retiring senior colleague, who makes it clear that she and her husband enjoy a lavender marriage.
Wilson’s monologues about his cheeky, charismatic character, who we first meet at the age of 19 at the dawn of his sexual awakening, alternate with two BBC producers’ attempts to construct their “documentary” (less of a piece of exploratory journalism that we would expect of the term today, and more a collection of talking heads) in a Corporation that would much rather they didn’t. Max Lohan and Andrew Pollard, who also play a multitude of other characters, display a fine forensic examination of how, even then, the BBC’s desire not to be seen taking sides could ultimately be self-destructive.
As the pair struggles to develop their work – unusually for the time, it is labelled “experimental”, commissioned without a commitment to broadcast, without even an idea of its expected duration – their quest to find people to talk finds them talking to so many people willing to talk about gay people and what a problem homosexuality is, while the voices of gay people themselves are barely considered. Parallels with the current climate, where trans people’s lives are often discussed on the Corporations’ airwaves with anybody but trans people contributing, are even more stark in 2026 than they were at the time of the play’s writing.
Lohan and, in particular, Pollard take great delight in their multiplicity of roles. Pollard’s waspish take on a prospective programme participant whose “contributions” were deemed inappropriate is all the riper for knowing that said contributor, one Mrs Mary Whitehouse, would go on to become such a notorious figure.
Lohan, meanwhile, plays a variety of men to whom Wilson’s Tom is attracted, from customers looking to be measured up to soldiers and gardeners he picks up during his increasingly frequent visits to London. The sequences with Tom illustrate the danger gay people faced having to perpetually hide from society, the joy upon finding a kindred soul, and the heartache when a failing relationship can’t even be discussed for fear that someone might overhear.
It is something of a shame that the crossover between the two alternating plot strands is merely thematic. The strongest connection is that the idea of what is termed “conversion therapy” raises its head in both. So, too, are ideas that gay men such as Tom are the way they are because they have been mothered too much, are somehow underdeveloped compared to heterosexuals. Being rooted in the time in which it is set, Hornby’s play relies upon us to provide our own counterpoints to such narratives: there is little space for such honesty and humanity in the world of the late 1950s.
The BBC’s documentary lay on the shelves, unbroadcast, for three years until 1957, when the Wolfenden Report was published, recommending decriminalisation. A vastly edited version finally aired under the title The Homosexual Condition. Its initial subtitle, The Condition, The Cult and the Crime, was not used in the final version, but it still reflects the piece’s tone.
There had been, and continue to be, many gay people working in the BBC since its inception. Besides the two fictionalised producers Hornby creates, their whole department (one might argue, the very notion of news and current affairs that remains Radio 4’s cornerstone) was created by Hilda Matheson, the Corporation’s first Director of Talks, who was as out as it was possible to be in the 1930s. That did not stop its paralysis on the topic. The desire not to rock the boat led to work that othered people who were already othered by society.
That is being repeated today not only in the media’s treatment of trans people, but by an insurgency of the reactionary opinions exhibited here, in pre-Wolfenden Britain. Attempts to ban conversion therapy repeatedly run up against the sort of ill-informed opinions espoused in The Homosexual Condition. Mary Whitehouse may have been too extreme for that documentary, but in 2026, one can’t help but feel that she would be too mild.
As a nation, we refuse to learn from history and thus are doomed to repeat it. The BBC’s First Homosexual is a nobly poignant attempt to buck that trend.
Runs until 14 February 2026 and continues to tour
