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The scandal that almost ended the career of Sir John Gielgud is to be brought to the London stage in a new play about the actor.
In the autumn of 1953, the newly knighted actor was at the height of his fame and about to direct himself in a prestigious West End production when he was arrested in a public toilet in Chelsea.
Gielgud was charged with "persistently importuning men for immoral purposes", a crime that transgressed the social taboos of the era and threatened to ruin him.
Gielgud pleaded guilty and was fined £10. His conviction caused a sensation.
The new play, Plague Over England, will suggest that the high-profile case helped to bring the country nearer to making homosexuality legal. It was decriminalised in 1967, freeing millions from the fear of conviction and public disgrace.
Gielgud, who died in 2000 at the age of 96, is widely regarded as the most accomplished stage actor of the 20th century. While he did not hide his homosexuality, he never discussed it openly. In 1988 he publicly acknowledged his relationship with his long-time lover, Martin Hensler.
Plague Over England, which opens on February 27, is the first full-length play by veteran theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh. "This play is not just about the offence," he said. "That would have been prurient. I wanted to use it as a microcosm of this witch-hunt in the 1950s. I knew Sir John a little bit and he was a most amazing man."
The critic and author, who has been a reviewer for the London Evening Standard for 17 years, said he had not planned to write a play. "I don't know how it happened. I found myself writing the scene with the judge. Gielgud's stoicism was incredible and I wanted to get that across. He knew he should not have winked at that policeman in the lavatory and he felt his career was over."
The script has been drawn in large part from de Jongh's own research with surviving friends and colleagues of Gielgud's and is set at the time of the arrest, then later in 1974, when the actor took his first gay role in Harold Pinter's play No Man's Land.
The work is intended to remind audiences of the strength of anti-gay sentiment in the 1950s. Homosexuality was frequently likened to drug addiction or an epidemic of cancer.
The Churchill government is thought by some to have promoted a witch-hunt after the spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, who were both gay, defected to the Soviet Union. De Jongh's play includes a scene in which young policemen are taught how to seduce men in public toilets in order to entrap them.
Gielgud, who was renowned for his resonant voice, is to be played by Jasper Britton, while Nichola McAuliffe will take the part of Dame Sybil Thorndike.
"Nicholas has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the period, which gives me confidence," said Britton, "But it is daunting to play someone who had such singular vocal presence. I don't want to do an impersonation but I do try to sound like him."
Plague Over England is directed by Tamara Harvey, who has warned the cast that, because the author is a critic, reviewers may not be kind.
De Jongh has admitted to being terrified, though exhilarated, by the experience. He can only hope that audiences buoy him in the way they did Gielgud himself when he returned to perform in the theatre after his conviction. He was greeted with a standing ovation.
- OBSERVER
