The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs: The Show That’s Making Queer Theatre Sing

Playwright Iman Qureshi sometimes wonders if there are any stories left to tell, but she has come up with a cracker in The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs, which opens at the Kiln Theatre this month. A genuinely feel-good musical comedy, it tells the story of a lesbian choir singing their hearts out and trying to find the harmony in pop classics as they struggle to find accord in their personal relationships and win a place on the Pride mainstage. When the show had a run at Soho Theatre in 2022, it was an immediate hit with comparisons to British movies including Pride, Calendar Girls and Military Wives.

“There was an appetite for the show,” recalls director Hannah Hauer-King, “that I don’t think we had fully anticipated.” She adds drily, “It does have the word ‘lesbian' in the title.” But Ministry went way beyond a cult hit. “The lack of representation of gay women is something I held dear, but what became clear was it wasn’t just lesbians, queer women and non-binary people who were coming and responding to the show; there were lots of straight people too. Some people came back three or four times. They brought their mums.”

Hannah Hauer-King in rehearsals for The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs. Photo by Mark Senior.

Qureshi still recalls the moment when she came up with the idea. She and Hauer-King had seen The Inheritance and the NT’s revival of Angels in America, and “we had been talking about where were the lesbian plays that looked at what it means to be a lesbian today, how that has changed over many years, what do we have to learn and what does our experience have to offer the world?” If women’s experience, until relatively recently, has been less documented on stage, then perhaps lesbians have suffered a double erasure. Qureshi is also clear-eyed about the infighting within the lesbian community, “which has always weakened our ability to speak with one voice.” But how to dramatise all that?

The Eureka moment came while listening to a Cambridge choir sing a hymn. “I realised that a choir was the perfect metaphor to talk about community and this community of voices. We could encounter this community of voices, hear how amazing they sound together, even hear their different notes and then see the fragmentation. The conductor of the choir says that ‘you sound best when we listen to each other.’ The choir metaphor holds the many voices. It may sound cheesy, but it really does work.”

Cast in rehearsals for The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs. Photo by Mark Senior.

Commercial producers Antic Productions clearly thought so too, and they are on board with this revamped and partially rewritten revival, necessary not least because times are tough in theatre and eight people on stage in a mid-scale show is a big ask. All credit to the Kiln for not running scared but seeing the show’s potential. There has been interest too from both film and TV companies, although it is the stage version that excites Qureshi and the potential to take it onto a journey that might lead to the West End. “My focus is on giving it its fullest and best life to its greatest potential.”

“Soho was glorious,” says Hauer-King, “but the show felt as if it was trying to elbow its way out of the building. The Kiln has a bigger stage.” The second run also gives the pair the chance to develop both the complexity and embrace the comedy. Hauer-King points to the fact that historically, work out there about lesbians has been “very sad and tragic and somebody dies” and that Ministry is “shaking the cobwebs off of that.” She adds, “We found it funny, but we didn’t realise just how funny the audiences would find it. The first few previews were like a lesbian megachurch, but then other people started finding their way to see it, and they just connected to the idea of an unruly choir and the humour, and we are really trying to lean into that while also honouring the play and where it needs to go, because it does need to go to some painful places.”

Zak Ghazi-Torbati and Serena Manteghi in rehearsals for The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs. Photo by Mark Senior.

Both Qureshi and Hauer-King are at an interesting point in their careers. Both have just spent time in residence at the National Theatre (“we had a year of waving at each other in corridors”), and Hauer-King will return there later this year when she directs a school’s tour of Indhu Rubasingham’s opening show, a version of Euripides’ The Bacchae. But for the moment their focus is on Ministry.

“It is a play which feels necessary and relevant,” muses Hauer-King. “Maybe even more relevant than it was in 2022 because a crucial theme of the play is about queer people struggling to find space and division and separation and discord. With the Supreme Court ruling and Donald Trump in power and the fact that 50 states in the USA are trying to change legislation that protects queer people, it feels like a difficult and divisive time to be a queer person.”

Leah Harvey, Georgie Henley and Serena Manteghi in rehearsals for The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs. Photo by Mark Senior.

“It’s also a play about community and isolation,” adds Qureshi. “Whether you are a lesbian or not, we live in an increasingly isolated world behind screens, and the places where we used to gather and commune are shutting down. Theatre is one of the few places left. This play is a microcosm of how important it is to gather together and come together as a community and sort out our differences and how much easier that is when we are together in person in dialogue and not just bashing things from behind a keyboard. The play speaks to that, and it does it joyfully.”

The Ministry Of Lesbian Affairs is playing at the Kiln Theatre from Fri 13 Jun - Sat 12 Jul. Book your tickets on our website or app.