FringeReview UK 2026

Pride

National Theatre, London and P&P Productions

Genre: Comedic, Drama, Historical, LGBTQ+ Theatre, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, Musical Theatre, New Writing, Theatre

Venue: National Theatre, Dorfman

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

There seems a sweet spot for activism to turn nostalgic. LGBTQ and the miners became attractive around 2012, with the last homophobic laws struck down, and (as Beth Steel’s 2014 play Wonderland depicts) nearly all pits closed. You might surmise subjects turn cuddly when they’re no longer a threat. Though Sian Jones, featured in Pride and who became an MP, is certain that in this climate those 2012 laws would not be passed now. Maybe that’s another great reason to stage this work, derived from the 2014 film. With book and lyrics by Stephen Beresford, and music by Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen, and DJ Walde, Pride the Musical arrives at National Theatre’s Dorfman, developed and directed by Matthew Warchus for P&P Productions till September 12. It then transfers.

Considering its pulling-power, it’s a surprise Pride is playing at the diminutive Dorfman, though it’s tailored for it and pre-recorded and live noises-off (with sound by Bobby Aitken) are felt intimately cheek-by-jowl by an audience in this space. Clearly that’ll reconfigure on the transfer.  

This is a musical which follows the film to a degree, but is more hard-hitting; especially with some of the homophobia enacted in Wales, that turns a late moment very dark indeed. It’s more subdued. And – as has been pointed out – lead activist Mark Ashton’s Communist Party cred was never mentioned in the film, save in an image: not to worry the U.S. market. Ashton (Jhon Lumsden) gets a more truthful, certainly historically-informed treatment here. And he too carries his own darkness.  

Beresford’s scenario takes the musical story-telling of real-life musicals and allows for some finesse; and he writes memorable, punchy lyrics. Nightingale, Cohen and Walde write attractive rousing anthems and some reflective numbers round them. They’re as good as anything else out there in new musicals at the moment. But they don’t stay in the mind. The focus is the act of singing, the scenes of communal action, and the character-acting.

The story’s well-known. How on July 15 1984 Mark Ashton started with six friends the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners group. The strike is four months old and the general violence against LGBTQ people has lessened as the police are busy elsewhere. The Battle of Orgreave had taken place on June 18 (the one where the BBC doctored the footage to show the miners, not the police were the aggressors. Of course that’d never happen now). It was a critical recognition. Another group of people are being blamed and bludgeoned by the state. Both would soon be labelled by Thatcher as “the enemy within”. This support begins one of the greatest acts of solidarity from one unaffiliated group to another.

The play doesn’t flinch from depicting both initial apathy and then community prejudice: though in both cases it seems localized. There’s a more chilling moment later on though that shows what happens when people are brought in from outside a community.

If Lumsden’s Mark Ashton is the fire – in a charismatic, wiry performance – Courtney Stapleton’s Steph is the quip-witted L in the LGBT, and Samuel Barnett’s intellectual Jonathan paradoxically the song and dance. Despite owning Gay’s the Word bookshop Barnett’s character is the showman. Jonathan’s an actor (“he was in Colditz”…). At the opening of Act Two he comes on in a showstopper moment where tech usually reports “due to…”. Then after frolicking with the audience reveals something personal.

Stapleton often gets the funniest lines. Of the core seven members of the activist group, she’s the only woman: it’s the Welsh cast where most female characters are found.

Matthew Durkan’s Mike has co-founded Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners with Ashton. He’s the Recording Angel of the movement. Durkan plays a persistent geeky chronicler, the true, patient friend. So one of the musical’s most extraordinary moments happens between him and Mark happens late on. It’s such moments as this that mark a gritty divide from the film, and it’s welcome.

There’s nuance in the participation of more hesitant gay activists. Reggie (Jordan Shaw) as a man of colour is already a target. His exuberant breakthrough is as affirmative as Bromley (Lewis Cornay, a performance unfolding exuberance slowly). Bromley’s the 20-year-old who can’t even be out as it’s illegal.. Cornay’s character tracing the world of adolescent magazine through maturity is charged through Bromley’s parents’ horror if they find out.

Gethin (Chris Jenkins) was given an hour’s notice to leave North Wales by his mother 16 years before. Gethin’s pained accommodations to Wales is one of the most gripping. It also provides great jokes. South Wales can take LGBT. But someone from North Wales?

There’s fine ensemble work from the women’s committee led by Sarah Pugh as Sian, whose union husband Martin (Robin Hayward) both admires and is slightly threatened by her sudden pre-eminence. As a union arbiter Martin can’t take sides in voting: despite being onside with both strike and new supporters. Pugh’s powerhouse leadership is bolstered as comedy and discovery by Gillian Elisa’s wisecracking older Gwen, and Mared Williams’ Margaret. With  Kirsty Malpas’ nifty, witty Hefina and ensemble like Madeline Morgan, Catherine Morris (memorable on the disco floor), the women’s outing to gay-scene London is the exuberant showstopper of the night

There’s plangent witness from warmly welcoming Dai (Matthew Woodyat) a study in someone who immediately gets it, despite being older and male. And the more hesitant affirmation from Cliff (Darren Lawrence) for reasons of his own.

Inevitably homophobia raises itself in community dissenter Maureen (Caroline Sheen) who eventually fades with no redeeming arc. There’s fine ensemble work too from Daniel Forrester, Alyn Howke and Graham Vick.

The denouement is both messier and more truthful than the film; though the end is heartwarming and naturally a matter of historical record. How in Pride 1985 intended by its organisers as non-political is interrupted by a glorious showing of countless coaches of miners come to support it in return.

Bunny Christie’s swept set (and costumes) with pop-up props tells the story with minimum distraction – strikingly lit by Hugh Vanstone. It allows the lively choreography by Lizzie Gee to breathe (most fun when Welshmen learn disco). Jo Cichonska directs her sextet on the mezzanine (behind a gallery occasionally used as a snogging-patch by characters), with orchestrations by Christopher Nightingale and Tom Kelly.

There’s no doubt this musical – lasting two hours 45 – ticks all the boxes of a smash hit, though songs, punchy as the lyrics are, don’t stick. The welcome song from Dai, almost speech till it gets underway, is the most original.

As Sian Jones says, the legislation finally won 14 years ago wouldn’t happen now in more reactionary times. The best lack all conviction. Similarly the 30 or more years needed for a hot topic to cool is something alarming in British theatre. In an age of reverse woke and outrage, we’re too easily intimidated by the forces of reaction. Uniquely though our government – and through this atmosphere many theatres too – seem intimidated by other nations. Dangerously, government ministers display an abject willingness to operate as their Vichy proxies.

The Suffragettes perhaps waited longer than you’d expect to be celebrated. The most directly involved play about them – Direct Action from 1936-38, by Githa Sowerby of all writers – has never been staged. That’s only partly down to its slightly unfinished state, and needing around ten actors. Ask Samuel French. It does though beg questions. Why in the risk-taking 1970s, before the first-generation culture wars of Thatcher and cuts started, it didn’t take 30 years – and now over 40 – for such campaigns to become theatrical. We’ve had some luck with Black and minorities theatre. Nevertheless with police and state brutality, resistance and sheer nasty hostility we see less treatment on stage.  That’s leaving aside alone issues such as recent Terror legislation (first enacted against the Kurdish community in 2024, before the new laws proxy-inflicted by other states).

Pride is essential. But musicals centred around Trans people – shows quite common around three years ago at the Royal Court – seem to have evaporated. The greatest danger in celebrating past struggle is that it lets us off the hook of any now.

And in sentencing activists for eight years as terrorists for mere criminal damage, the sentencing judge referenced Suffragettes without blinking. The Suffragettes who blew up houses and who’d get life today. Our protests are being turned against us or neutered into nostalgia. Whatever the struggle – and there was a heroic amount depicted in Pride – we can’t sleep easily on that.

Sound Design Bobby Aitken, Fight Director Kate Waters, Casting Directors David Grindrod CDG CSA, Dialect Coach Nick Trumble, Voice Coach Charlie Hughed D’Aeth, Wigs Hair & Make-Up Designer Campbell Young Associates. Associate Choreographer  (Sherman Theatre) Ashley Andrews,  Associate Lighting and Video Designer Luca Panetta, Associate Sound Designer Jonas Roebuck, Associate Music Director Natalie Pound, Staff Director Jennifer Lane Baker, Assistant Choreographer Helen Siveter.

Producer Fran Miller, Production Manager Igor, CSM Sam Greisser, DSM Catherine Gibbs, ASMs Alice Jenkins and Charlotte Dukes, ASM Cover Sophie Mclean, Deputy Production Manager Lisa Hood, Project Draughting Tom Atkinson, Digital Art Daniel Radley-Bennett, AdditionalLighting Draughting Toby Ison, Costume Supervisor Zeb Lalljee, Assistant Costume Supervisor Megan Rarity. Wigs Hair & Make-Up Supervisor Leanne Lashbrook.

Published September 5, 2026 by Simon Jenner