The play’s the thing
Might a future king of England turn out to be gay?
That’s the scenario award-winning Canadian playwright Jordan Tannahill envisions in a new script headed for production in London’s West End.
Currently, the play has a title that on its own will likely stir controversy, referencing as it does a certain “f-slur” term for gay men — one Hollywood star Matt Damon has recently found himself having to disavow.
The play is a futuristic satire focusing on Prince George, eldest son of William and Kate, and what happens 10 years from now when he comes out as gay to his parents.
It culminates in a gay royal wedding.
The Ottawa-born Tannahill, a two-time Governor General’s Award winner for drama, currently lives in London, England, and wrote the play during the pandemic.
“It’s a piece that very much looks at the relationship between queerness and power and what forms of queerness have always been in the halls of power, and what ones have been kept at the curb and will continue to be kept in the curb in this sort of 21st century,” Tannahill said.
He emphasized that he wasn’t aiming for broad parody. “It really is very much an attempt to create what I think is a very legitimate possible scenario. The characters are very human.”
Gay monarchs have figured previously in the history of British royalty. They include William II, Edward II, James I (he of the King James Version of the Bible) and purportedly Richard the Lionheart. The recent Oscar-winning movie The Favourite focuses on the relationship between Queen Anne and the Duchess of Marlborough. The present Queen’s own uncle, the Duke of Kent (killed in a plane crash during the Second World War) was by some reports bisexual.
Tannahill says a commercial run for his play is definitely in the works. “We’re just trying to find the right home for it,” he says.
It won’t be the first time London has seen a futuristic play about the Royal Family — 2014 saw the debut of Mike Bartlett’s play King Charles III, chronicling the constitutional crisis that erupts when Charles succeeds his mother, Elizabeth II, to the throne and refuses to give royal assent to a controversial piece of legislation.
Tannahill has also just published a novel (not related to his new play), The Listeners.