The first post-lockdown live performance at the Criterion will be staged over five nights to a socially distanced audience.

To accommodate social distancing there will only be 28 seats available each night. In addition the run is reduced  in order to allow us to cope with increased demands on volunteers and enhanced cleaning regimes. 

There is also an additional online streamed performance for one night only at the end of the run. This is organised to be as much of proper night out at the theatre as we can make it in online form. The performance will be a filmed recording of a live performance from the dress rehearsal, so will include all sound effects and music, as well as being produced in our professionally-lit theatre space. Cast and crew members will be there on the night. 

'Queers' is a wonderful collection of beautifully-written monologues, all by different writers, which celebrates a century of evolving social attitudes and political milestones in British LGBTQI+ history, as seen through the eyes of different individuals.

A young soldier returning from the trenches of the First World War recollects a love that dare not speak its name. Almost one hundred years later, a groom-to-be prepares for his gay wedding. 

They were curated by Mark Gatiss and broadcast on BBC Four in 2017 and also staged at The Old Vic in London.

Poignant and personal, funny, tragic and riotous, these  monologues for male and female performers cover major events – such as the Wolfenden Report of 1957, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the debate over the age of consent – through deeply affecting and personal rites-of-passage stories.

This play contains strong language and content of a sexual nature.