‘They kissed, and the audience roared’: the new musical about gay activists and striking miners

In 1984, an unlikely coalition was formed between London LGBTQ+ campaigners and Welsh miners. Now their story, as told in the 2014 film Pride, is coming to the stage. The original demonstrators share what the new production means to them

The National Theatre’s new summer musical is all about real people, but here’s a strange feeling – many of them are literally sitting around me tonight. In a buzzy, early preview for Pride: The Musical at Cardiff’s Sherman theatre, there’s Reggie Blennerhassett and Ray Aller, a couple who have been together for 44 years, wearing T-shirts printed with the poster for a notorious 1984 fundraising gig they helped organise. Its name? Pits and Perverts.

Siân James watches her younger self dance at an LGBTQ+ club in Soho, while retired tailor and actor Jonathan Blake is recast on stage in a glitzy robe and kaftan, performing a Broadway-style showstopper. “My words coming out of his mouth as he sang!” Blake shakes his head more than four decades later. “I was utterly floored!”