Headlined by Will Young, Marc Almond and Alison Moyet, this concert to celebrate the 50th anniversary of sexual freedom – simultaneously broadcast on Radio 2 - doesn’t lack party atmosphere. There are ticker-tape explosions and massed singalongs of the Village People’s YMCA and Donna Summer’s I Feel Love, led by the Gay Abandon choir. The celebratory piece de resistance is surely the guy in the crowd singing along with a ventriloquist’s dummy, which has been glammed up in a silver wig. Yet for all the outbreaks of joy, the most effective moments are more downbeat. Presenter Ana Matronic from the Scissor Sisters reminds us that in the 1967 so-called Summer of Love, “a section of society could be dragged before a magistrate for holding hands in the street”. Actor Allan Corduner reads from Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, written while the literary giant served two years hard labour for “indecency”. He dreamed of a quiet life by the seaside but was dead within three years.
The format of spoken word alternating with stars performing one song per appearance probably works better on the radio. Despite a slightly disjointed feel, however, the performances are often very moving. Marc Almond draws deep for What Makes a Man a Man and Lavender, an impassioned tale of hiding his sexuality as a teen and finding escape through David Bowie. Opera singer Noah Stewart’s You’ll Never Walk Alone and Nessun Dorma are obvious choices, but he brings down the house. Will Young’s breezy, jazzy renditions of Sade’s Smooth Operator and Terence Trent D’Arby’s Wishing Well feel lightweight, but Moyet is surely singing better now than in her 80s commercial heyday.
Corduner describes how the great John Gielgud returned to the stage after his 1953 court appearance for cottaging and was cheered to the rafters, as the public and the arts led pressure for legal change. And who knew that Tom Robinson’s hit, 2-4-6-8 Motorway, was inspired by an old gay lib chant (“2-4-6-8, gay is twice as good as straight”)? The BBC once banned his song Glad to Be Gay; now they employ him as DJ. To “mark how far we’ve come” he sings the 1978 song – queer insults, police brutality and all – every bit as furiously as he did then. It’s a spine-tingling reminder that, for the 74 countries where LGBT relationships remain illegal, there is a very long way to go.
• On BBC iPlayer until 27 August.
