★★

“it remains an interesting and worthwhile history lesson”

Jenny lives with Eric and Martin was just another children’s book in 1988. It wasn’t new and wasn’t even originally British, as it had first been published in Copenhagen in 1982. So how did this book become the starting point of a campaign, which ultimately led to the inclusion of Section 28 within the Local Government Act of 1988? After the Act is an entertaining musical, which tells the story of Section 28 through the eyes of those most closely affected.

‘Section 28’ refers to a specific clause with the Local Government Act of 1988, which prohibited schools from ‘promoting’ homosexuality, the wording of which was ambiguous enough that it resulted in the restriction of teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality, particularly concerning family relationships.

It is a strange era to look back on. Views that would be considered to be politically extreme nowadays were front and centre and were actually winning the argument. An imaginary enemy had been conjured up, largely driven by ignorance and misunderstanding. After the Act explores this period of recent history from multiple vital perspectives: teachers who could not speak up for risk of jeopardising their careers, students for whom bullying and discrimination had become a part of their everyday existence and the activists who fought hard to educate people and bring about real change.

The play splits fairly evenly into two halves. In the first act, we see the build-up to the passing of the Act in 1988. The tone is set clearly early in the play. People’s concerns about gay people are not challenged, whereas protestors are dismissed as mad rabble-rousers. Two scenes stand out in the first act. The first is where protestors have made it on the news at 6 on the BBC but are being silenced (fitting for the time) to not disrupt the broadcast. The second is the re-enactment of protestors abseiling into the House of Lords following the passing of the bill. These scenes are excellently written (Billy Barrett and Ellice Stevens) paying tribute to the real-life activists involved.

The second act covers the aftermath to the passing of the Act before it was eventually repealed in 2003, detailing the experiences of people who had to live through this time period and how it affected them well beyond the law had been changed. This should be the point where it all comes together. However, the biggest issue is the contradiction between its comedic elements and the hard-hitting truths that it wishes to divulge. The tone of most of the first act is strangely uplifting and funny, which is maintained through to the start of the second act, when one of the performers enters the stage dressed as Margaret Thatcher and sings as the former Prime Minister.

The individual elements of the play are interesting and well-performed, and all of the cast display an impressive range as they move from character to character bringing to life more people’s stories from this period. However, these parts often work against each other without a clear link to the central narrative, rather appearing more like a slide show of different characters.

Keyboard and drums add a lively accompaniment to the performances on stage. Sadly, the backing music and use of songs is often overdone and is too much of an ‘ever-present’ during the show rather peaking for significant moments, which does make it a little tiring, giving the show an impression of ‘more bark than bite’. Overall, despite its flaws as a production, it remains an interesting and worthwhile history lesson, which deserves to be taught.

EAST IS SOUTH

Hampstead Theatre

★★★

“The cast is superb and slips through the gears with unruffled confidence”

In his break-out hit House of Cards, writer Beau Willimon peered into the darker culverts of the human soul to assemble Kevin Spacey’s sinister politician Frank Underwood. In the dazzlingly complex East Is South, he stays in the same vicinity but stares fixedly upwards.

He is doing nothing less than searching for God, or her composite parts.

His new play asks whether Agi – the anthropomorphised AI machine – has the necessary attributes to claim the role.

These dense philosophical disquisitions are, mercifully, pinned to a conventional genre plot. Someone has sidestepped protocols and attempted to release Agi into the outside world.

The stage is a soulless interrogation suite in a secret facility. Coders Lena (Kaya Scodelario) and Sasha (Luke Treadaway) are quizzed by diligent NSA agent Samira (Nathalie Armin). Loitering in the shadows is mentor and walking Ted talk Ari Abrams (Cliff Curtis), who is battling his own demons, except he doesn’t believe in such things.

On a two-tier stage, the office above is set aside for the watchers, the agents and the monitors.

Despite Lena’s plaintive denials, there are reasons to suspect her motives. She comes from a strict Mennonite Christian upbringing and her vetting throws up some dubious episodes in her past. Then there’s her relationship with Sasha, a Russian refugee who literally bears the scars of a repressive regime.

Why would they risk everything – freedom, life, intellectual exploration – on a fool’s errand? Another question might be, why deny Agi her manifest destiny?

Under Ellen McDougall’s unobtrusive direction, the interrogation scenes ground a script which, like a toppled firework, has an instinct to shoot off in brilliant tangents. The cross-examinations are tense, revelatory – and comprehensible.

Elsewhere, it feels like an explosion in an encyclopedia factory, with characters picking up random pages and reading aloud. We have an explanation of the Māori Haka, a disquisition on the duality of mind and body, a theory of dark matter, an update on efficient evolution, some rousing Bach deconstruction, an unfortunate incident with a snack bowl and a torrent of other fragmentary pieces that attempt to cohere into a grasp of ineffability, which by nature and definition proves impossible.

Meanwhile agent Olsen (Alec Newman), an amusingly simple soul among a collection of racked consciences, only wants to break fingers and find the truth. While others have multiple descriptors (Māori Jew, Sufi Muslim) he’s just an American, he says, and tired of all the high-falutin’ speechifying.

The cast is superb and slips through the gears with unruffled confidence. Scodelario is nicely unreadable as the idealistic coder, neatly balancing a clear intellectual rigour with a soft and damaged heart. Treadaway is sinuous and sly. Armin gives the thankless role of interrogator depth, while professorial Curtis steals scenes with his nuanced Eeyore ramblings.

They all wear their brilliance lightly. This is just as well, because the heavy-handed approach to the topic threatens to snuff out the guttering candle that is leading us mere mortals through this mazy nether world.

In the end, the posturing longueurs edge out the needs of genre drama such that relationships are rushed and the plot twists are never entirely convincing.

Nevertheless, this is an ambitious and fearless attempt to explore the nature of AI which threatens to revive discussions of the divine just as we in the West have settled for secularity.

What emerges is the irrational need for transcendence and ritual that make us both human and – in Agi’s eyes – unfit for purpose.

AFTER THE ACT

Royal Court

★★

“it remains an interesting and worthwhile history lesson”

AFTER THE ACT

Royal Court

Reviewed on 27th May 2025

by Luke Goscomb

Photography by Alex Brenner

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

AFTER THE ACT

AFTER THE ACT

AFTER THE ACT

EAST IS SOUTH

Hampstead Theatre

★★★

“The cast is superb and slips through the gears with unruffled confidence”

EAST IS SOUTH

Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed on 17th February 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Manuel Harlan

Previously reviewed at this venue:

EAST IS SOUTH

EAST IS SOUTH

EAST IS SOUTH

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