Theatre review: Quaint Honour

This review is brought to you by codeine – I put my back out again on Saturday, and if I hadn’t got it under control by Sunday I’d have had to miss what might be the Finborough’s best rediscovery in years. The theatre’s official contribution to the 50-year anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality, Roger Gellert’s Quaint Honour dates from a decade earlier, and is set in the location with perhaps the most ambiguous attitude to relationships between men: An all-boys’ boarding school. Sexual relationships between the pupils are of course strictly forbidden, but not quite so strictly policed – perhaps because the staff know the can of worms they’d be opening. But Head Prefect Park (Oliver Gully) is on a personal crusade to root out which of the boys are sleeping with each other. He hopes his deputy, Tully (Harley Viveash) will help him, but Tully thinks he’s imagining the problem.

Theatre review: Princess Ida

I was due to see Princess Ida last week, but instead spent the afternoon on a District Line train stuck between stations. Although Gilbert and Sullivan aren't one of my biggest theatrical interests, I'd rather decide which shows to see or miss myself, not have TFL do it for me, so I gave it another go. And I'm glad I did - apart from anything else if a piece by writers this popular is being staged at the Finborough, you know it'll be one that's slipped through the cracks and doesn't get performed often. Although adaptor-director Phil Willmott hopes to change that - Princess Ida as written has apparently dated badly and is structured in a confusing way that puts people off. So he's given it a more linear telling of the story of Ida (Bridget Costello,) who has many suitors but, on the day she turns 21, her guardian Gama (Simon Butteriss) decides he'd much rather marry her himself. To keep her away from rivals he convinces her that men are beasts to be avoided, and she should establish a women-only university.