ajhlovestheatre

PRIDE

Book and lyrics by Stephen Beresford

Music by Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen and DJ Walde

developed and directed by Matthew Warchus 

National Theatre/Dorfman Theatre, London – until 12 September 2026

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/pride/

It’s a heck of an achievement to carve a feel-good musical out of one of the grimmest periods of modern history, but that’s what the team behind this gritty yet transporting new tuner, adapted by Stephen Beresford from his own acclaimed screenplay for the 2014 movie, achieves. To be entirely fair, Pride, a joint venture between the National, Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre and P&P Productions, is more of a feel-everything musical. Like the soon-returning Billy Elliot, with which it shares DNA as well as the backdrop of the mid-1980s British Miners strikes, this ambitious, soul-stirring show dramatises real life stories and examines personal despair through the prism of public outrage and triumph. 

Also like Billy Elliot, it has the word ‘hit’ written all over it, repeatedly finding the sweet spot between tearjerking emotion and showbiz exhilaration that all but yanks the paying public out of their seats. You’ll have a wonderful time at Pride, but you’ll also bear witness to something important: a true story where people showed up for each other despite their differences, in this case radical gays and lesbians raising money for the beleaguered striking miners just as the AIDS crisis is biting into their own community. Here’s where humanity and kindness stick two fingers up to division and cruelty, and it speaks to our troubled times with a rare urgency. The tone also recalls Come From Away, the 9/11 tuner which similarly sends audiences out into the night wrung out yet feeling that people are fundamentally good and that life is worth living.

Matthew Warchus’ fast-moving staging, choreographed with attack by Lizzie Gee, is deceptively clever. It succeeds in seeming rough-around-the-edges enough to appear spontaneous and accessible, while also splicing or bleeding scenes together with a cinematic ingenuity, and when it seeks to show off, it’s pretty fabulous. There’s seldom a moment across two and a half engaging hours where it’s unclear where the focus is. These creatives really know what they’re doing.

So does the multi-roling ensemble cast. It’s a treat to hear so many authentic Welsh accents on a London stage, and there’s not a weak link in the company. Chris Jenkins delivers beautiful, sensitive work as the bookshop owner who takes everything on the chin, from bigots attacking his place of work to rejection by his mother due to his sexuality, while nursing a deep well of hurt. Kirsty Malpass is another stand-out as practical but fiery Hefina (the Imelda Staunton role in the film), whose stern exterior masks authentic kindness and acceptance. Caroline Sheen, cast against type as a mean-spirited widow suspicious of a perceived gay agenda, nails the woman’s bitterness but also her loneliness. Gillian Elisa is outrageous good fun as older, indomitable Gwen (“now where are my lesbians?”), although the writing for her character tends to always go for the easy laugh, something which is a bit of an issue for much of the rest of the show too, to be honest.

Lewis Cornay draws a tender, accurate portrait of closeted Bromley (so named because that’s the London borough he hails from), drawn inexorably to the gang of gay activists as he comes to terms with his sexuality. Jhon Lumsden brings steely charm and sex appeal but also winning vulnerability to left wing activist Mark whose political convictions kick-start the whole story, and Courtney Stapleton invests Steph, the sole woman in the central group, with just the right mixture of warmth and attitude. 

Matthew Woodyatt is wonderful as community leader Dai whose world view is genuinely expanded beyond the Welsh Valleys by the well meaning gay interlopers from London, and Sarah Pugh is heartwarming perfection as the young wife who will go on to achieve great things. Samuel Barnett, in a career-redefining performance, brilliantly marries flamboyance with underlying dread as larger-than-life Jonathan, living with, and triumphing over, an apparently fatal health condition (it’s easy to forget these days that an HIV diagnosis in the ‘80s was frequently a death sentence) and determined to wring every last drop of life out of whatever time he has left.

Beresford’s script and Warchus’ staging switches back and forth between time periods (the story is told in flashback) and locations (mainly gay bars and clubs in London as well as the legendary Gay’s The Word bookshop, versus the rural Welsh mining village) with propulsive theatricality and admirable clarity. Bunny Christie’s economical but accurate costuming (also Campbell Young’s wig creations) and malleable steel deck set and Hugh Vanstone’s lighting play invaluable roles in establishing time, place and character. Collectively, this is theatre-making of the highest order.

The weakest aspect of Pride is the eclectic score by Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen and DJ Walde, which is good but not great, proving more stirring than memorable. It’s an accomplished, well-crafted collection of pastiches, everything from disco to Welsh hymnal, Broadway show tune to Jonathan Larson-esque theatrical rock, which works well enough in context, but lacks a strong identity of its own. There’s a recurring anthem, rather like a Welsh answer to Les Mis, that thrills the blood, and is thrillingly sung, but oft-repeated lyrics like “I was a fool to ever doubt you, I’ll think again next time you’ll see” sound awkward and don’t trip off the tongue in the same way as, say, “Do you hear the people sing”.

The best lyrics here are the funny ones: Bromley’s poppy coming-out song, despite its unfortunate resemblance to the ‘Gay: The Musical’ send-up in the TV sitcom The IT Crowd, includes the gem “Spare the sermon / I like cock and Ethel Merman”. The gallows humour of the showboating Kander and Ebb-style second act opener, where Barnett’s Jonathan rips with dark, glittering wit into his longevity prospects in the face of his HIV diagnosis, feels like something genuinely dangerous and daring. One suspects Sondheim would have approved. 

Several numbers (Jonathan’s bouncy disco reverie, and a moving choral eulogy to souls lost to AIDS) stop the show cold but you’d be hard pushed to hear any of these songs, attractive as they are, out of context and identify them as being from Pride. Few will care: taken as a whole, the musical is a huge success.

This is one of the most eagerly anticipated new British musicals in many years, and it turns out it is also one of the best. It may be about specific groups of people at a specific time in the last century but it has a life-enhancing universality and well-earned emotional punch that appeals to many. This is a limited initial run on the South Bank, and it’s already sold out, but I would wager that Pride will be around for a very long time.