Did gay Conservatives have it easier in the past? Tory Boyz makes me think they did

Bang! The race is on. James Graham is the celebrated author of This House, a superb examination of Labour’s administrative bellyflops during the 1970s, which premièred at the National last year. Some time ago, Graham was asked to update his 2008 play, Tory Boyz, about homosexuality in the Conservative party. Over the same period, the Tories have been furiously updating themselves. Who will embrace the future first?

Graham’s play is a blend of then and now. He imagines an openly gay youngster working in the Tory policy unit, and he compares his experience with Ted Heath’s career in the 1950s. (That Heath was gay is taken for granted.) But the sprint is over before it’s even begun. Graham’s reworked script hasn’t the legs to outpace the Tory modernisers who earlier this year legalised gay marriage. This befuddles the play’s purpose.

Graham attempts to dramatise the travails of his gay character by inventing a swaggering Conservative bully who humiliates his colleagues and mocks their sexuality with barrages of loathsome jibes. It’s scarcely credible that such a figure could exist today, let alone escape detection. His brand of vicious bigotry would be secretly recorded and broadcast on Channel 4 in a sensational exposé of rotten Tory throwbacks. Despite the play’s crisp and convincing dialogue, it misses the cultural moment. It feels dated.

The play’s historical sections are hampered by the character of the ambitious young Heath. He proves intractable on stage. An intelligent, laconic, elusive and entirely humourless mummy’s boy, Heath never reveals himself. Nor does the play threaten his defences or present him with choices that would force him to open up. My guess is that Graham has been bewitched by late-vintage Heath, the Incredible Sulk, who glowered like a toad on the green benches for three decades.