“I realised that I’d never seen two black men kiss on stage” – director Anthony Simpson-Pike on revival of Beautiful Thing
We’re looking forward to the 30th anniversary revival of Jonathan Harvey’s classic queer play Beautiful Thing, which opens for previews at the Theatre Royal Stratford East later this week, and will move onto the Leeds Playhouse and HOME Manchester later this autumn.
Ahead of the show’s opening, we caught up with director Anthony Simpson-Pike – who recently directed Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors at the National Theatre – to find out a bit more about this new production.
For those unfamiliar, Beautiful Thing is a seminal piece of queer theatre, which debuted in 1993 and was subsequently made into a film by Channel 4 in 1996.
It’s a classic coming out and coming-of-age tale, focusing on the lives of teenage boys Ste and Jamie, who are neighbours on a South London estate.
