In 1953, Sir John Gielgud was arrested for cottaging, entrapped by the so-called "pretty police". Theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh's new play makes this the defining event in the actor's life (so much so that, until the arrest, Jasper Britton's likeable Gielgud drifts along purposelessly, an empty vessel waiting for tragedy to be poured in). Around him de Jongh has arrayed a diversity of gay romances, each designed to undercut the homophobia of the 1950s establishment.

Yet for a play explicitly concerned with sexuality and taboo, Plague Over England is strangely coy, groping for laughs among obvious innuendo. At only one point does desire dare speak its name, and even then it keeps its pants on. Gielgud himself is oddly sexless for a man whose story is dominated by his sexuality.