**Touring production. Reviewed at The Cinema Museum 10th February 2026**

As regular readers of these theatre reviews will already know, 2026 is really shaping up to be a good year for visiting performance spaces that had hitherto remained completely unknown to me. One such space is the venue for the London press night of Stephen M. Hornby’s play The BBC’s First Homosexual where (spoiler alert!) I not only got to enjoy this incredible 5 star production, (more of which later), but I also got to experience The Cinema Museum in Kennington, an incredible building that surprisingly, for this particular, equally avid, lover of film had somehow failed to appear on my radar. So it was that I found myself making my way to the first-floor performance space via a series of corridors and stairwells eclectically decorated with some incredibly fascinating historic cinematic artefacts, from film posters to industrial looking Fresnel lensed studio spotlights, massive old cinema projectors and what just seemed to be an endless collection of memorabilia from cinema’s golden age, (the likes of Betty Boop and Charlie Chaplin making their presence strongly felt through a variety of busts and sculptures)

It just so happens that this somewhat unique choice of venue proved to be an excellent location for tonight’s performance. Not only was the setting strangely evocative of the era in which the events of the play were about to unfold, but I’m assuming that the timing of this touring production was no accident either given that this story, based around the factual account of a lost 1954 radio documentary on male homosexuality, comes during LGBTQ+ History Month. Whilst no recording remains of the actual documentary in question, a transcript was discovered by the historical advisor of tonight’s production, Marcus Collins, and whilst several moments do get recreated from its pages, these are cleverly intertwined between two other narratives. The first depicts the complexities faced by the two BBC producers, (played by Andrew Pollard and Max Lohan), wanting to produce the documentary about homosexuality, especially with the resistance within the corporation, (not to mention society at large), to even getting the word itself said on the radio. “It would come out of the same speaker as the Queen’s Christmas speech!”, frets one of them. “We must find a ‘BBC’ way to deal with it”.

Adjacent to this we are introduced to nineteen-year-old Tom, (Mitchell Wilson) a cheeky but affable low-level manager who is climbing through the ranks of high-street menswear retailer Burtons in Manchester whilst simultaneously discovering his sexuality, albeit somewhat to his own surprise. A tricky coming of age to navigate at the best of times but made all the more difficult by it coming at a time where fear and prejudice is rife, and being ostracised, beaten-up or arrested were not uncommon prospects for a gay man in the 1950’s, sex between two men still being a criminal offence at the time. It could still be found however, and whilst a trip to London’s Soho doesn’t make Tom ‘happy’, it does make him feel ‘alive’, Wilson’s performance being a first-class navigation through Tom’s myriad of emotions, thoughts and feelings on this journey of self-discovery.

Hornby’s script juggles the various threads admirably giving each a real sense of the oppressive atmosphere that existed at the time, and despite the stage design consisting of little more than a desk and a couple of chairs to centre the audience in the BBC producers office the story itself is not tied to the one location, the transitions between which are admirably taken care of by the effective lighting and sound design. Keeping Mitchell Wilson’s character at the emotional heart of the piece finds Max Lohan and Andrew Pollard required to double up from their troubled BBC Producer roles to play various satellite characters circling around Toms orbit. Director Oliver Hurst once again keeps the physical transformations as minimal as the set, but each portrayal is so impressively played that somehow none of that seems to matter, Pollard giving us a brief but memorable turn as Mary Whitehouse, and Lohan slipping into several characters that become the object of Tom’s affections.

Despite this touring across the country during LGBTQ+ History month, (dates below) it would be wrong to assume that this is a play that will only be of interest in this limited window of time as this is a beautifully conceived play which is as entertaining as it is informative and is performed by a superb and talented cast. I don’t know whether the production company have managed to find such interesting locations for the rest of its run, but on this occasion, The Cinema Museum was a very nice cherry on top of an already incredible cake!

★ ★ ★ ★ ★