The Pride review

Last Saturday, Whitehall in London was thronged with demonstrators protesting against Russia's new anti-gay laws. It seems a good time, therefore, for Jamie Lloyd to revive Alexi Kaye Campbell's prizewinning 2008 play about the seismic changes in attitudes to sexuality that have taken place in Britain over the past 60 years. At the curtain call, Campbell's cast even hold up placards declaring "To Russia With Love".

But Campbell's play is far more than propaganda: it's a work of art that juxtaposes scenes from the repressive 1950s with others from the more liberated, but still imperfect, present. In the past we are confronted by a tortuous emotional triangle: Philip (Harry Hadden-Paton) is an estate agent married to Sylvia (Hayley Atwell), but guiltily attracted to Oliver (Al Weaver), the writer whose books his wife is illustrating. In the present, the names are the same, but the characters are different: the modern Oliver is a freelance journalist in danger of wrecking his relationship with Philip through his addiction to anonymous sex, and constantly turning to his friend Sylvia for support.

For me, the play's success lies in recreating the unloved, long-ago 1950s. There is more than a touch of Terence Rattigan about the way polite encounters are suffused with sexual tension. And nothing in the present-day scenes matches the horror of the episode where the guilt-wracked Philip seeks aversion therapy to "cure" his physical attraction to other men.

Lloyd's superbly acted revival balances the two halves of the play better than his Royal Court original. Sylvia now seems a more pivotal figure, thanks to Atwell's skill in forging a link between the wounded wife of the 1950s and the loyal friend of the present. Hadden-Paton also hints at a subliminal connection between the past and present Philips, who both conceal desire behind a mask of formal rectitude.

If all this sounds a bit earnest, Mathew Horne provides comic relief as a rented provider of fantasy sex and as a wide-boy editor. That last character is a sharp reminder that Britain has undergone a sexual sea change – but it hasn't banished prurience or prejudice.

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