Serendipitously coinciding with the Mardi Gras season in Sydney, ACT Hub has its counterpart in a new production of the show, Queers.

Staged in 2019 by Everyman Theatre at The Courtyard Studio, it’s a theatrical ode in seven monologues to queer life in Britain from the bad old days through to the marriage equality movement, which the final scene celebrates.

Steph Roberts and Jarrad West were co-directors back then and they’re doing their sister-brother act again.

Noting a predilection for team directing in Canberra of late, I asked Roberts how it actually worked.

For her and West, she says: “Co-directing works in lots of different ways… both of us are often in the room watching the rehearsals together and sharing our ideas with actors.”

That’s effective, she believes, if you’re directing with someone you know really well so that you’re aligned with each other’s vision, as with the two of them.

But also, there’s a practical advantage. West is down at the coast on summer holidays when I’m talking to Roberts for instance, so she can take over from him.

Just as in 2019, she says, the production will be staged with cabaret-style seating similar to ACT Hub’s spoof version of The Importance of Being Earnest in late 2022, although the actors may speak directly to audience members as they wander around the space, transformed into queer pick-up pub, The Prince’s Arms.

The core of Queers is found in the monologues, which tell the story of queer life from 1917 to 2017, the anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalised homosexual acts in private between two men over the age of 21. 

As part of the BBC’s cycle “Gay Britannia”, Mark Gattis was approached to curate a series of monologues about queer life and queer rights. He wrote the first one and commissioned the others.

Apart from Alex Hoskinson, memorable for his role in 2019 as a young soldier returning from the trenches of World War I, the other actors are new. One of the original eight monologues is omitted because of the problem in casting an African-American character. 

Queers will see the return to the Canberra stage of veteran actor Geoffrey Borny to play the plum role of gay Duke Street tailor Jackie Edwards. “He is sublime,” Robert says.

When I phone him, Borny declares himself tickled pink to be back on the boards, not having acted since Everyman Theatre’s Twelve Angry Men in 2018.

The oldest in the line-up, he says: “At 81, it was a big thing to do a 20-minute monologue, but I’m quite confident now.

“I’m in the middle of the show. I’m the guy reacting to the decriminalisation of homosexuality and my reaction is that I don’t like it. I liked the secrecy; the hunt and I don’t think I’d approve of men marrying men and women marrying women – I liked not living a bourgeois life.”

Music plays an important part in the show, so that in the 1920s section, Louiza Blomfeld, accompanied by pianist Callum Tolhurst-Close, sings popular music from that period, which Roberts says “sort of acts as a bit of an interval,” although there’s no traditional interval but rather a series of shorter breaks. 

As well, in 2019 local composer Alex Unikowski, wrote an original theme song for the play, sections and motifs from which they will be using.

Funnily enough, considering the show’s origins, Roberts says: “It does seem seamless, a series of conversations so carefully curated that there are subtle links… each section has its own style as the piece moves forward in time.”

It all ends in “Something Borrowed”, a wedding-day celebration of how far things have come.

“But, it’s also bittersweet, because the characters have endured some terrible experiences and things got lost along the way – there’s still a need for change,” says Roberts.

Queers, ACT Hub, Kingston, February 14-24.