‘They kissed, and the audience roared’: new song about gay activists and miners | Theater

TThe National Theatre’s new summer musical is about real people, but here’s a strange feeling – many of them are sitting around me tonight. In a stunning, original performance of Pride: The Musical at Cardiff’s Sherman theatre, there are Reggie Blennerhassett and Ray Aller, a couple who have been together for 44 years, wearing T-shirts printed with the image of the famous fundraising gig in 1984 that they helped organize. His name? Pits and Perverts.

Siân James watches her mini-dance at an LGBTQ+ club in Soho, while retired tailor and actor Jonathan Blake is re-enacted on stage in a glittering gown and kaftan, performing a Broadway show. “My voice came out of his mouth when he sang!” Blake shakes his head after forty years. “I was so disappointed!”

Twelve years ago, Dominic West danced on a table as Blake in the 2014 Golden Globe- and Bafta-nominated British film. Pridewhich told the story of the London-based activist group, Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), and members of the Neath, Dulais and Swansea Valley colliery communities who supported them financially during 1984-1985. Pride: The Musical now adapts the film, vividly, from the screen to the stage, revealing how two very different groups defied racism, fought the government and formed lifelong friendships.

“Pride feels to me like a romantic comedy between two groups of haters, who end up falling in love,” says Matthew Warchus, director of the original film and new musical (as well as being the creative director of the Old Vic theatre, and director of the blockbuster film and stage adaptation of Matilda). Growing up in the North Yorkshire mining village of Drax with his Welsh mother, he fondly remembers discovering the early records of composer Stephen Beresford – and how “immediately” it sounded like music.

Why? “There was something about the heart of Pride that made it so good…

Beresford, who also worked on the original film and adaptation of Matilda and Warchus, first heard about LGSM in the early 1990s through an old acquaintance. He found out how it was created in July 1984, a month after the group’s leader, Mark Ashton, decided to raise money for miners at that year’s Pride march in London. Ashton explained why in the 1986 short film, All Out! Dancing at Dulais (where you’re still watching on YouTube): “For one party to give an agreement to another.”

But until the Neath, Dulais and Swansea Valleys Miners’ Support Group responded to his call, the LGSM struggled to find communities that were not affected by racism, despite facing poverty. Pride: Musical previews have reminded Beresford of how British attitudes have changed since the end of the 20th century. “I’m in the 20s, I remember every gay on stage shaking or laughing, because people weren’t comfortable. Last night, when the kiss happened” – he says about the most exciting time – “all the people shouted.”

Musical moments are also important in the origin story of Pride. The December 1984 Pits and Perverts gig, headlined by Bronski Beat in north London’s Electric Ballroom, was LGSM’s biggest fundraiser, raising an incredible £5,500 for the miners, for a total of £22,500 (equivalent to more than £70,000 today). The singing in Onllwyn Welfare Hall, which was beautifully captured on film, is also translated on stage, led by Mared Williams, while the orchestra (award-winning Christopher Nightingale, together with Josh Cohen and DJ Walde) supports the genre of music including punky-pop-torch and balla.

The new album, Light Perpetual, reflects on the sadness and horror of that time, when the effects of the AIDS epidemic began to affect the media. At his performance, I see Ray Aller, his head on Blennerhassett’s shoulder, in tears. “The film Pride was amazing,” he says, sitting in the green room with his partner, Jonathan Blake and Siân James. “But there’s something about this song – it’s like you’re back there. It’s real.”

James – a young woman who helped welcome LGSM to the village in 1984 – nods. “When I look at music now, I don’t feel like it’s about me. I sit there and think about all the people who are no longer with us, and how this is a testament and a record of their lives.” This includes Mark Ashton himself, who died of Aids at the age of 26 in 1987, and Cliff, an older, quiet member of the mining team, played by Bill Nighy in the film, who later came out.

This song also makes Blake feel “if I exist”. One of the first people in the UK to be diagnosed with HIV in October 1982, he has been on antiretroviral drugs since 1997, and is a bright, healthy 76. He joined LGSM after meeting boyfriend Nigel Young in 1983, who ran the London Gay’s the Word directory; they remained married for the rest of their lives (Young died in 2022). “Meeting Nigel, who was very active in politics, changed my life. LGSM gave me the best drug treatment, and a lot of fun,” Blake said.

Pride: The song is also very funny – a little bit raunchy, a little bluesy, but full of heartwarming jokes (including the classics about gay women and vegetarians – if you know, you’ll love it). When the film was being made, James was concerned that “Welsh people are often made to look like silly bills – but that hasn’t happened to us, which is something I’ve been very grateful for over the last 12 years”. Political power and his role in the strike, James served as MP for Swansea East from 2005 to 2015, and he tells me that many times people were affected by the original film.

This includes a young gay woman who watched it with her grandfather, who was once an impressionable teenager, too. “He told me he was crying at the end, then he said: ‘It’s only the beginning, but I’m starting to understand.'” He smiles. “Isn’t that the power of the story?” James also mentions the grandchildren of today, mentioning some of their generation coming out. “This wouldn’t have happened when my children were young, so we’ve come a long way – although we still have a long way to go.” (This year, trade unions joined forces to fund Durham Pride, after the Reform-led council cut funding for the event.)

At a surprise Pride march in London in June 1985, a Dulais Valley minibus sponsored by LGSM arrived in Hyde Park, with Dulais Valley mining representative Dai Donovan leading the group. I see him in the row in front of me in the second act: he is now white-haired at 78, his fist clenched over his mouth, while his character sings a song about strength in the last days of the revolution.

I’m talking to him after standing up for him. How did they find music? “Very touching,” he says kindly. “Tonight we really talked about the pressures that gay people face – and a lot of people will know that this was a good thing that came out of the miners’ strike.” Four months after Donovan led the show, the Labor Party announced support for gay rights at its annual conference. Three years later, it strongly opposed section 28. In 2004, the government introduced the Civil Partnerships Act, which legalized same-sex marriage.

It speaks volumes that LGSM and the mining community have been helping “tirelessly” with these previews, Warchus adds, even when the review “was difficult, and we told them not to come”. Beresford laughs. They certainly came.

But Warchus doesn’t care. “We really wanted to launch it in Wales, so the first night of screening…” he exhales. “You can’t publish this without me looking like shit, but it was one of the most exciting things in my life.” Being with them was precious, for us to be in charge of their story, and for them to feel that it is theirs.”

Pride: Music is at the National Theatre: Dorfman, London, until 12 September.