Beloved 2014 queer film Pride getting musical stage adaptation

Queer movie Pride is to be given a musical makeover, the National Theatre has announced.

The 2014 film is based on the true story of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, when queer activists supported striking coal-miners in South Wales in the 80s. It starred George MacKay, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton and Andrew Scott, with a script by Scott’s partner at the time, Stephen Beresford.

Announcing the musical adaptation on Tuesday (29 April), a spokesperson for the National Theatre said it would form part of a new programme of work and be staged at the Dorfman Theatre.

It will reunite the film’s director Matthew Warchus with Beresford. Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen and DJ Walde have created the music for the show, which will first play at the Sherman Theatre, in Cardiff. No opening dates have been given yet.

National Theatre director and co-chief executive Indhu Rubasingham said: “I am so excited about everything to come, and the wealth of projects and artists announced today.

“The National Theatre is a beacon of creativity, humanity and possibilities. It holds the stories of so many people who have made this place mean so much to so many. This is just the beginning, a flavour of what’s to come, the start of the next chapter.”

The film was praised for bringing to the screen the real-life story of how two very different communities united at a difficult time and found a way to support each other.

However, as Scott told PinkNews in 2014, it was not a “gay film”, but rather “about humanity”.

Scott went on to say: “Everybody within the cast and crew responded to that feeling at the read-through very passionately. They felt a huge ownership over that, whether they were men, women, gay or straight.”

Activist Mike Jackson, played in the film by Joseph Gilgun, said at the time that he was “thrilled that this has happened because there was a great danger that the story would be lost to history forever.”

Another character featured was Jonathan Blake (played by Dominic West), one of the first people in the UK to be diagnosed with HIV, and one of the country’s longest-surviving people with the condition.

Now 75, he was diagnosed in October 1982.

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