Teatrolley
(Various venues, 1981 and 1992)
In “Come Together”, the anthology of the magazine produced by the Gay Liberation Front 1970 – 1973, there is an enchanting account of an Action carried out by Camden GLF on Hampstead Heath. Frustrated by the lack of political awareness among ordinary gay men, the GLFers decided to go up to the Cruising ground on the Heath, confront the Cruisers with the shallowness of their lifestyles, and preach the gospels of Gay Liberation and Coming Out.
The evening was a complete disaster. All the Cruisers ran away, and after standing around freezing for a couple of hours, many of the GLFers thought “What the Hell?” and decided to join in the Cruising instead.
The best detail in the story was that the GLF people took a tea trolley onto the Heath with them, to offer refreshment to the Cruisers; and to make sure that they weren’t intimidating or mistaken for the Police, they festooned the tea trolley with fairy lights. Put yourself in the position of a gay man out looking for sex, and it’s hard to imagine anything more scary.
From this original basis in fact, Eric Presland (as he then was) fashioned “Teatrolley”, an hour-long Shakespearean fantasy based on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. The play is written in blank verse, with four a capella songs. Two GLF members, Peascod and Orangeblossom, visit Hampstead Heath with a tea trolley to convert the cruisers. They encounter two Clones, Pistachio and Neapolitano, whose relationship is breaking up and who are trying to spice it up with a dash of casual sex; a leather Queen, Gaspacho; and a policeman, Raspberry, who is trying to bump up his arrest rates with easy pickings, in order to meet his targets.
Orangeblossom (“an Impetuous Young Fairy”) is priggish and patronising about the Cruisers and sex in generally, while Peascod (“ a Wise Old Fairy”) is more worldly. To teach Orangeblossom a lesson about life, he puts a magic potion in the Tea Urn, which will make the drinker fall in love with the first man he sees. But when all the other characters in turn drink from the Urn, everything goes horribly wrong.
The play is set on Hampstead Heath at midnight on Midsummer Night, so it seemed logical to present it in situ as a free Midsummer celebration at midnight. This we did in 1981, 1982 and 1992, as well as taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe in 1982. The presentation was so popular that it led to a series of four Heath Plays (see under Consenting Adults) and an extra free performance every year on Clapham Common. By 1986, we were attracting over 1,000 people to each show, and it became too big, rowdy and unwieldy to continue. So the Heath Plays came to a stop. It would be nice to revive the tradition.
The script is available for performance by other companies. To obtain a script, contact homopromos@hotmail.co.uk.
