The BBC’s First Homosexual – New Adelphi Theatre, Salford

Writer: Stephen M Hornby
Director: Oliver Hurst

Multi-award winning Inkbrew Productions has come to the New Adelphi Theatre at the University of Salford as part of a national tour of The BBC’s First Homosexual – a production based on the lost 1954 radio documentary on male homosexuality. 

Powerful and poignant, the piece is being delivered as part of LGBT+ History Month – an annual celebration of the lives of LGBT+ people of the past, which is marked every February in the UK. 

Writer Stephen M Hornby has done a phenomenal job of bringing history to life, interspersing a fictional story of a young boy Tom (Mitchell Wilson) discovering his homosexuality in 1950s England, with the story of the making of the BBC radio documentary. The production moves fluidly between fourth-wall-breaking moments – with the protagonist addressing the audience directly, aided by the other two actors in multi-role – and more traditional storytelling, following the BBC colleagues as they formulate a plan for a groundbreaking and pioneering broadcast. In reality, what happened to this broadcast was it got banned for being so taboo, with a heavily edited version being aired three years later in 1957. All that survived was a forgotten transcript of the original recording, remarkably rediscovered after over seventy years – and it’s this story that Hornby has reignited, with permission from the BBC and funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of the Re-viewing LGBTQ+ Lives project. 

The timing of the play couldn’t be more perfect, in a month devoted to looking at how far we’ve come and how much further we still have to go. The production veers between the mind-boggling, the almost laughable, and the heartbreaking. And what gives it its sting is the reminder that, despite progress, these beliefs have not vanished – and that some people are still denied the right to truly belong.

With only three actors, a pretty bare set, bar an old-fashioned office set up for the BBC scenes and a simple yet effective lighting rig, it’s a tough ask to produce something that’s going to keep an audience engaged for nearly 90 minutes with no interval. And yet, with superb direction from Oliver Hurst and solid performances from each of the three performers, time does fly. 

There really is no weak link in this cast, with Wilson, Emmerdale’s Max Lohan and Andrew Pollard working together harmoniously to deliver some tricky yet highly engaging scenes, with nobody leaving the stage for the entirety of the show. Given the production is heavily reliant on dialogue and full audience concentration, the sound levels could to do to be upped slightly – the slightest move from somebody in the audience and you could miss ‘a moment’. But all in all, this is a fascinating insight into history – produced by a company that need your support to make sure more real stories can be brought to the stage in accessible and captivating ways. 

Reviewed on 5 February 2026 and continues on a UK Tour