Daily Mail: A National Disgrace

Sir Nicholas Hytner will soon finish his stint running the Royal National Theatre. One of his parting gifts to us is John, a dance-influenced production about unprotected sex in gay saunas.

How brave! How enlightened! Perhaps not. Perhaps this is just a seamy, sorry exercise, shorn of morals, commissioned in a moment of silliness by an artistic director who, for all the hyped indulgence and baubles he has received from the Establishment and the London Evening Standard, has had an erratic tenure...

It starts with clever depictions of the disruptive upbringing of a man called John and his sexually violent father. After about 15 minutes of this impressive if explicit material we switch to a gay sauna full of men showing us their whatnots, in at least one case semi-erect

For the next hour, sauna sex is everything. We are told of an orgy of 15 men. We see two blokes seemingly pleasuring themselves. There is a ballet of buggery, an offstage gay rape, endless talk about what complete strangers get up to in saunas. One charming scene is devoted to the amount of excrement left in saunas after a busy night. You taxpayers are helping to fund this...

Having written in support of gay rights since the late Nineties, I hope I can say without being accused of homophobia that John is, despite the artfulness of its performers, a disgrace.

Not that Sir Nicholas will mind. He will rub his little millionaire, State-enriched hands in glee at having created controversy. He has his knighthood already. There is even talk that he will soon be sent to the House of Lords, there to moralise and legislate over us.

This, folks, is the state of art and politics in 21st- century Britain.

Quentin Letts, Daily Mail.

Queeny Quentin's really got her knickers in a twist about this. 

Textbook stuff.

And how ironic that his 'review' will sell a shedload of tickets.