Pictures

Sample script

(Finborough Arms, Summer 1989)

The most controversial play in Homo Promos’ history, “Leather” played to almost universally bad reviews and packed houses. During the course of the run, the brewery which owns the Finborough Arms tried to ban the play, but we had the support of the Theatre organisers there, and completed the four-week run.

The source of this controversy lay in the subject matter rather than the quality of the script. PHIL is a middle-aged civil servant and spare-time gay activist and Gay Switchboard volunteer; he befriends GORDON, who has recently arrived in London. Though they are drawn to each other, Gordon freaks out every time Phil touches him. Patiently over time Phil finds out that Gordon was raped.

Breaking down the barriers between them, they develop a relationship. But later Gordon begins to realise his attraction to S/M, and starts an affair with TERRY, a doctor, unbeknownst to Phil. When Phil discovers it, he tries to be accommodating, but finds his own attitudes can’t let him accept this. He even tries an S/M scenario with Gordon in his desperation to keep him, with disastrous results.

In a desperate attempt to get even with Gordon, Phil gets drunk and goes to Hampstead Heath for a casual pick-up. Half way through the encounter he changes his mind and wants to stop having sex, but his partner ignores this and Phil himself ends up feeling he has been raped.

Under pressure at work, and facing a trial for causing criminal damage on a demonstration, the desolate Phil cracks and attacks Gordon, now living with Terry. In the most shocking scene in the play, Phil subjects Gordon to a fisting rape, undoing most of the confidence-building he has achieved with Gordon. But Gordon now is mature enough, and has enough self-knowledge, to be able to recover.

The play is written in a naturalistic style, punctuated with stylised episodes depicting the S/M and rape scenes. Its theme of gay domestic violence was at the time a completely taboo subject. The play continually draws distinctions between consensual and non-consensual violence – from the state-sponsored police violence on the demonstration, through a spectrum to extreme but consensual Sado-Masochistic scenarios. Ultimately, however, it is about redemption and self-knowledge through trial – a constant theme of Presland’s work both comic and serious.

It was an intense and emotionally exhausting experience to work on this show. Presland later sublimated his experiences into “Eric’s Leather Appendage” a 30-minute monologue presented at the Diorama in Camden Town in 1996 as part of a double bill with “Zip!”.