Tomorrow is Too Late

Played for fun with a serious intention this comedy is based on the campaign against W H Smith banning Gay News and opens with people gathering to protest outside one of the companies outlets. In the background an audio tape plays the sounds of a cock crowing, gay chants getting closer, traffic noise and voices of disproval from passers-by. The scene is set initially for playful banter referencing the poor dress sense fo the ‘straight’ left, the Prince Albert a well-known gay bar and Icebreakers the radical gay counselling service among others. One of the protesters offers a choice of badges to wear and names them which allows the exposition of various aspects of gay liberation politics. After a hostile encounter between the stock character of a crusty old colonel objecting to their presence the character played by Colm Clifford bursts into song with a tango rhythm after asserting he is proud to be a pervert:

The scene shifts to gay liberationists refusing to buy goods from W H Smith for refusing to stock Gay News having checked them out at the till followed by smashing up the shop after a row with the manager. An audio tape plays the sound of the shop being trashed and the echoing sound of police sirens. A character played by Ian Townson delivers this speech as the sirens get louder and louder:

“……Ladies and gentlemen and those who are free of such piddling divisions of gender; we are gathered here today in the sight of this glass, chrome and plastic edifice called W H Smith to protest about their ignorance of the fact that there are thousands and thousands of homosexuals in London - nay in Notting Hill Gate alone who wish to buy Gay News. We are everywhere but nowhere are we recognised - except by the police. They create out martyrs, yet martyrdom has been given the status of a dirty word. Well, it ain’t. It’s just one person going too far and we all stand back and think “Oh, no! He’s blown it!” Maybe if we were all going too far, too far wouldn’t be very far at all! Martyrdom is no masochism - a collection of martyrs is a movement!” The police sirens drowning out the speech are countered by another song to the tune of “Lullaby of Broadway”:

The song ends with sirens wailing, flashing blue lights and the sound of general hubbub as Jim (Jim Ennis) throws a brick through a window. The cry of “What silly queen did that” leads into another song condemning violence, male power and macho posturing.

By now Jim has got a taste for direct action militancy and decides to apply for membership of GRAB (Gays Raging and Battling). Stephen Gee plays the NAFF operations officer for the organisation and is responsible for interviewing prospective members. The office is based in a cottage with poster on the wall reading ‘It’s a man’s life in the regular queenery’ and ‘Men just love men in uniform’ etc. Jim enquires “What exactly is GRAB?” leading into, yes, another song to the tune ‘Hey, look me over.’

Inevitably when applying for membership of an organization there are forms to fill in which takes the shape of an interrogation by the NAFF operations officer to assess his suitability. This provides the opportunity of making a number of polticial points and observations and for Jim to tell of his difficulties with friends, neighbours, workmates and others about his sexuality after the press had exposed his boyfriend’s queer-bashing by yobs outside the Vauxhall Tavern:

“So first of all we had the milkman stop credit; they don’t talk to me in the greengrocers - we’re no longer a couple of lads in the local; the woman upstairs mysteriously found another baby-sitter and the final straw was cries of “Oh what a gay day” following David all the way down the High Street.”

The more liberal neighbours recommended ‘a very good psychiatrist’ and the local Methodists pushed ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ tracts through the letter box which prompts the observation “Scratch a liberal and find a fascist.” Jim is so steamed up about things that he just wants to ‘blow them all up’ which clinches his membership. On enquiring about the size of GRAB he assured that “We are into quality not quantity - what do you think this? Rock Against Racism?” Jim is renamed agent 69 (sexual position) with sealed orders in a cake box and on enquiring how to recognise fellow agents he is to use the code phrase ‘Discretion is the worst part of closetry’. The scene ends with an audio tape playing ‘Gays All Over’ (White Cliffs of Dover by Vera Lynn) followed by several disjointed scenes.

In the first one Jim discovers a talking pink triangle in the cake box which, to begin with, he confuses with a mushroom (magic?). This seems to have no other function than to produce a comic hallucinatory ‘Alice in Wonderland’ interlude with a feeble joke from the triangle as it leaves the stage about there not being mushroom (much room) in the cake box. The lights fade then returns as Andreas Demetriou performs a long, graceful dance. Two sombrely dressed figures appear and proceed to erect a structure of bars which restrict Andreas’ movements. He then by subtlety and slight-of-hand manages to knock down this restrictive structure and dances on unopposed symbolically destroying the forces of repression.

The lights cross fade to Jim in a gay bar on a telephone to CHE (Campaign for Homosexual Equality) with the intention of enlisting all of its 250 local groups to blow up branches of W H Smith. The CHE man thinks it is a practical joke being played on the organisation by the SWP (Socialist Workers’ Party) or the GAA (Gay Activists Alliance). Jim carries on with the unhinged proposition to use neutron bombs:

“guaranteed to destroy property absolutely but leave people untouched (in reality neutron bombs were designed to have the opposite effect) - except for covering them in a shower of pink-triangle confetti……I’ve got the blue prints with me……they came to me in a cake box……I can give you a demonstration……”

The telephone clicks as the CHE man abruptly hangs up.

In the second scene Jim Meets characters played by Julian Hows as a chatty queen and Ian Townson as Ingrid Slut, a drag artiste, who takes the opportunity sing his latest number:

For some inexplicable reason they all decide to visit the Egyptian section at the Victorian and Albert Museum where the characters played by Colm and Stephen are discovered by Bill Thornycroft hiding from the police in a vase and a sarcophagus. The others arrive with the intention of blowing up W H Smith which allows Colm to condemn this lapse into ‘male violence’ as ‘The ends do not justify the means’ with ‘half-baked talk of violence and bombs - blind aggression, nothing else!’ Jim delivers a final speech in the style of Dr. Martin Luther King’s ‘I had a dream’ to be free of the straight male world forever. His plea for unity in the face of divisive ‘aggro’ is met by a song from Bill:

The play ends with the sound of a great rushing wind and a huge explosion after Bill’s suggestion that they all make their way back to his place for ‘a cup of tea’ in a comic anticlimax to their unrealistic and unrealizable bombing campaign though they will be afforded the opportunity to see the hole in the window of W H Smith made by the thrown brick.

The whole play is a complete comic fantasy which contains some sharp observations on the nature of masculinity, male power and gay oppression with some cracking songs. All contained within the framework of a gay liberation camperama drama.

The next two songs were written when we were influenced by radical lesbian politics though they were sung mostly ‘tongue in cheek’. Heterosexuals were the target of our wrath.

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