July 30th - August 25th (not 11) 15.25. Tickets from £9.50

Two beautiful boys fall in love, but that love is a crime. Patrick Wilde directs his award-winning, funny, heart-breaking and ultimately triumphant tale of courage and defiance.

When What’s Wrong With Angry? opened at a small fringe theatre in London in 1993 it played to six people. By the end of the three week run, thanks to some rave reviews and word of mouth, people (including Sir Ian McKellen) were queuing round the block.

A searing indictment of the appalling ant-gay laws (The Age of Consent was 5 years higher for gay men, and Section 28 meant local authority was too afraid to support anything homosexual) in the UK it caught the public imagination and was particularly championed by the gay community. It transferred to the Oval House Theatre, and thence the BAC, both of which venues it sold out.

As a piece of political theatre it was a huge part of the movement towards real equality for gay men. The laws started to be relaxed, but inequality persisted. Writer Patrick Wilde was commissioned to write a feature film version, and the play finally made it into the West End at The Arts Theatre.

Since then the feature film was released under the name Get Real, and it won the Edinburgh Film Festival audience prize in 1998. It also garnered awards at Dinard, Sydney and was chosen to appear at Sundance. The play has been translated into several languages, and played in Germany and Switzerland. In America it is very popular, having been staged in Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The play’s combination of politics, humour, a fantastic pumping soundtrack and a heart breaking love story has meant it has sold out almost everywhere it has played, and was described by Time Out as “popular theatre at it’s best – a real crown pleaser”. Though it tells of a time when things in theory were much tougher for young gay people, it still stands a celebration of the human spirit and determination to triumph, and in Patrick Wilde’s new shorter version directed by the playwright himself remains a poignant reminder of how recently things were very, very different.